The name of the IMPRES project stands for European Integrated Research Infrastructures for Monitoring and Predicting Space Weather. The IMPRES project aims at integrating the key research infrastructures in Europe for the observation and study of the ionosphere and magnetosphere.

For more information see the The IMPRES project web page at:
http://www.eiscat.rl.ac.uk/users/impres/

The central vision of the IMPRES proposal is:

• to create a European focus for ground-based space weather measurements, serving the research community and seeking pathways to move research to operations
• to include the coordination of ground-based measurements with space-based measurements (especially those monitoring the ionosphere, thermosphere and magnetosphere, and solar drivers such as the solar wind and solar EUV emissions)
• to allow access to scientific services that support research in space weather
• to demonstrate how national activities in these areas can be combined at a European level to deliver a better space weather capability than is possible on a national basis
• to raise awareness of the value of such integration and to explore how this integration can migrate into an infrastructure that is sustainable. This sustainability is important as there is, yet, little awareness among national and regional funding bodies that their support of individual space weather activities underpins a wider infrastructure from which all countries can benefit. The sustainability is thus a key goal of the project
• to structure the European space weather research community in an optimal way to address the above objectives, so that there is great interchange between sub-disciplines and greater awareness of the pathways by which space weather research can have valuable practical outcomes for both industry and the policy community

The ultimate goal of IMPRES is to enable development of well-qualified and quantitative forecasts of parameters describing the space weather phenomena that interact directly with technological systems - and to do so with sufficient lead time to allow effective procedural mitigation.