COST 296 scientific results designed for operational use

The main objective of the COST 296 Action «Mitigation of Ionospheric Effects on Radio Systems» is the establishment/
improvement of ionospheric services by coordinating the development of specific algorithms, models, and tools capable of operating in a near-real-time mode.
Key elements of these activities are contributions related to monitoring, modelling, and imaging of customer-relevant
ionospheric quantities. COST stimulates, coordinates, and supports Europe’s goals of development and global cooperation by providing high quality information and knowledge of ionospheric and plasmaspheric conditions enabling high quality and reliable operation of radio systems.
It also provides a platform for sharing such tools as algorithms or models, and for the joint development of advanced
technologies. It takes advantage of many national and European service initiatives, for example DIAS
(http://dias.space.noa.gr), SWACI (http://w3swaci.dlr.de), ESWUA (http://www.eswua.ingv.it/ingv), RWC-Warsaw
(http://www.cbk.waw.pl/rwc), the COST Prompt Ionospheric Database http://www.wdc.rl.ac.uk/cgibin/
digisondes/cost_database.pl, http://www.izmiran.ru/services, and others.
Existing national capabilities are taken into account to develop synergies and avoid duplication. The enhancement of environment monitoring networks and associated instrumentation yields mutual advantages for European and regional services specialized for local user needs.
It structurally increases the integration of limited-area services, and generates a platform employing the same approach to each task differing mostly in input and output data. In doing so it also provides a complementary description of the environmental state within issued information, as well as providing a platform for interaction among local end users, who define what kind of information they need, for system providers, who finalize the
tools necessary to obtain required information, and for local service providers, who do the actual processing of
data, tailoring it to specific users’ needs. Such an initiative creates a unique opportunity for small national services
to consolidate their product design so that is no longer limited to their own activity, but can serve the wider European services.
The development and improvement of techniques for mitigating ionospheric effects on radio systems by the
COST 296 Action prepared those services that implemented the new design techniques for the newly announced EU and ESA policy-Space Situation Awareness (SSA). COST 296 developments applied to nowcasting and forecasting services are an essential input to the Operational SSA Ionosphere.

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