| Many of the currently used standard models of the solar energetic particle environment
were developed based on results published more than 15 years ago. Modern user
requirements, as well as recent observational data and scientific advances mean
that these standards are currently in need of review and updating. Incorporating
recent scientific results and a complete set of well calibrated data the ESA Solar
Energetic Particle Environment Modelling (SEPEM) project is working towards
creating new engineering models and tools to address current and future needs. The
objectives of the SEPEM project are to move beyond a model generating only mission
integrated fluence statistics to include peak flux statistics, durations of high flux
periods and other outputs suitable for single event upset (SEU) rate and radiation
background calculations. Databases of ion species and their fluxes will also be
integrated into tools for SEU and background calculation so that past events and
future scenarios can be simulated. This study is also working to improve existing
physics-based shock-acceleration models to predict the expected event-time profiles at
non-Earth locations (near-Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars,...) with a view to obtaining a new
model of helio-radial dependence of events. One of the important outputs of SEPEM
is the creation of a standard solar energetic particle dataset. A further output of
SEPEM for the user community will be a user-friendly webserver with access to
the models being developed under this project. Through the webserver the data
will be easily accessible at various processing stages, as users might want to use
the raw data or skip some data processing steps and apply their own processing. |