The following items can be found on this web page:

• Proposal to COSPAR Bureau
• COSPAR Bureau decision
• Working group composition and planned activities
• Working group progress

The following proposal has been submitted to COSPAR Bureau in March 23rd, 2005:

Background:
It is now clear to everybody that the current standard AE8/AP8 model for ionising particle specification in the radiation belts must be updated. But such an objective is quite difficult to reach, just as a reminder, to develop AE8/AP8 model in the seventies was 10 persons full time for ten years. On the other hand a meeting was held at NASA/GSFC last October and one conclusion was that world-wide efforts must be combined because not any individual group has the human resource to perform these new models by themselves.

Proposal:
At the NASA meeting, both NASA and ESA agreed to proceed under the COSPAR/PRBEM (Panel on Radiation Belt Environment Model previously PSRB) umbrella. The idea is to create an international group of expert well distributed around the world to set up a common framework for everybody involved in this field. The idea is to have a maximum of two experts per country (assuming Europe is one country) known to be active in radiation belt studies.


Planned activities of the international group of experts:

• Set up guidelines to process in-situ data on a common basis.
• Decide in which form the new models will have to be.
• Centralise all progress done world-wide to advise the community.
• Try to organise world-wide activities as a project to ensure complementarities and more efficiencies between all efforts done.
• A web site will be set up at ONERA to gather all information.

COSPAR Bureau decision on March 24, 2005:

The Bureau accepted the proposal to have PRBEM serve as an umbrella for the creation of an international group of experts as described above (in the form it has been submitted during the Program Committee meeting of March 2005). The Bureau views the request to conduct this activity under the COSPAR/PRBEM umbrella as positive for an activity which should be conducted internationally.



Working group composition and planned activities:

It is planned to put the progress on new radiation belt models in two phases:

1. Define user needs, produce guidelines to process and analyse in-situ data, produce guidelines to develop new models.
2. New models evaluation and dissemination

A first working has been set up for phase one. It is composed of experts in radiation belt studies located in different countries where space research is active. The working group for phase two will be set up later and in this phase it is expected to involve user's such as space industries and space agencies. This two phases program will allow to separate model development and model evaluation (it is always better and fair to have a group to evaluate models independently of those who produce the model itself).

Current working group for phase one:

The following area of expertise are covered:

Radiation effects (4)
Data base (4)
Data acquisition (5)
Instrument response (3)
Data analysis (5)
Radiation belt models (empirical & theoretical) (4)


Links with other body:

CAWSES (2)
ISO WG4 (1)




Working group progress:

Right now two documents are available:

• User's needs
• Standard file format guidelines
• Data analysis procedure

and one document is in progress:

• Standard file format guidelines for raw data (counts)

If one has any inputs, please do not hesitate to provide them to your representative listed above. The working group will compile all those inputs and integrate them in the documents if they are judged relevent.