Project

Research Infrastructure Services Advancing Frontier Knowledge in Sun-Earth Interactions (RAISEARTH)

RAISEARTH will establish the first European research infrastructure offering end-to-end services across the Sun–Earth chain, supporting frontier research in heliophysics and space weather. Its objective is to provide transnational and virtual access to a service-ready infrastructure that integrates experimental facilities, harmonised data services, prediction models, and AI-enabled tools. Building on landmark projects such as EISCAT, LOFAR, PITHIA-NRF, and the VSWMC, RAISE introduces two innovations: full-chain integration from solar activity to ionospheric/thermospheric responses, and an AI-powered eScience Centre delivering services for event detection, semantic discovery, quality control, and forecasting.

RAISEARTH will deliver Transnational Access to instruments (such as radars, ionosondes, GNSS arrays, magnetometers, radio telescopes), and Virtual Access to FAIR datasets, event catalogues, and model outputs spanning the Sun–Earth system. The eScience Centre will provide AI-enhanced services, including automated event detection, forecasting, semantic search, data curation, and user-friendly ML workspaces. A strong training and innovation programme – schools, workshops, hackathons, and ad hoc support – will equip researchers with advanced skills in data stewardship and AI.

The methodology is based on distributed nodes connected via common standards and FAIR data pipelines, ensuring interoperability with the European Open Science Cloud and alignment with global frameworks (ESA SSA and VO). Services will be operational from project start, while new innovations are phased in sustainably.

RAISEARTH addresses the Horizon Europe Research Infrastructures Work Programme (SERV-04) by providing immediate transnational and virtual access, enhancing data exploitation with AI, and strengthening Europe’s leadership in heliophysics. It enables cross-disciplinary frontier research, maximises the use of European facilities, and builds capacity in line with ESFRI and EOSC priorities.

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Objectives

The overall objective of RAISEARTH is to provide transnational and virtual access to a comprehensive, service-ready Research Infrastructure that integrates experimental facilities, data services, prediction models, and advanced AI/ML capabilities to support frontier research on the Sun–Earth system. RAISEARTH services aim at innovators from academia and the industrial/operational sector, willing to test and verify new developments, before transition to operations. RAISEARTH provides a distributed research infrastructure, which is built on successful developments such as EISCAT, LOFAR, VSWMC and the PITHIA eSC, enhanced with two major innovations:

  1. Integration across the full Sun–Earth chain – from solar activity and interplanetary propagation through magnetospheric dynamics to ionospheric and thermospheric responses – enabling curiosity-driven, crossdomain research.
  2. Introduction of AI tools and sematic capabilities to support the development of EOSC-compatible trustful services, ready for operational use by the space industry.

Ambition

RAISEARTH aspires to establish the first integrated European Research Infrastructure that provides end-to-end access to the Sun–Earth system, transforming how space weather science is conducted and how its outcomes support society. Its ambition is scientific, service-oriented, capacity-building, and strategic at the European and global scale.

In essence, the ambition of RAISEARTH is to transform a fragmented set of facilities into an integrated, AI-enabled, and user-centred infrastructure that advances frontier science, builds capacity, and delivers trusted, operation-ready services with direct benefits for industry, society, and global space sustainability.