Building Collaborative Proving Grounds for R2O2R – NASA/CCMC - NOAA/SWPT Partnership

Abstract:

In 2016 and 2019 Executive Orders were signed by the President to prepare the Nation for Space Weather Events. At the forefront of being able to achieve this goal is the necessity to accelerate research-to-operations and to enhance operations-to-research (R2O2R). To drive this initiative, the Space Weather R2O2R Framework, initially led by NOAA and NASA, was developed. At the very center of the framework is the Space Weather Proving Grounds effort that will allow various institutions to collaborate, share, and advance their space weather modeling and simulation capabilities. The first of these Proving Grounds is the Architecture for Collaborative Evaluation (ACE) environment shared between the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC) at NASA and the Space Weather Prediction Testbed (SWPT) at NOAA. Since 2019, the ACE environment has been set up on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud where it utilizes AWS cloud services and Docker containerization technology. The purpose of this environment is to further enhance operational-grade models and software, and to demonstrate that research-grade models and software are ready to be transitioned into operational settings. In the presentation, we will give an overview of the ACE environment and its design goals. We will discuss any lessons learned as well as progress made based on what we have accomplished so far. We will also share future plans and any adjustments needed related to this effort. It is our hope that this effort will prove to be an effective method for advancing space weather event preparedness and become a model that can be extrapolated for other entities to collaborate and to advance R2O2R.