Space Environment Impacts Expert Group - SEIEG

The Space Environment Impacts Expert Group (SEIEG) is an independent committee of experts drawn from Academia, Research Institutes, Companies, and Agencies.

The primary purpose of SEIEG is to assess the science related to space weather, review the impact to people and modern infrastructure, and to provide support and advice to the UK Met Office and Government Departments.

The SEIEG is independent of Government and does not receive funding for the work it undertakes.

Space Weather

Space weather refers to changes in the near-space environment that disrupt modern technology and endanger human health. Space weather is driven primarily by solar variations and causes disruption to power supplies, satellites, communications, aviation, navigation, pipelines and much more.

Government Strategy

The UK Government strategy on space weather is set out in the UK Severe Space Weather Preparedness Strategy 2021. It sets out a plan to enhance the UK’s resilience to severe space weather events using three pillars. They are:

To enhance our understanding of severe events, its impacts and our ability to forecast events
To increase resilience of essential infrastructure and services
To ensure we can respond to events effectively and recover from them quickly

The SEIEG is working with the UK Met Office and Government Departments to help deliver this strategy.

Meetings

The SEIEG meets twice a year and is hosted by the Department for Energy and Net Zero (DESNZ). Senior civil servants from other Departments, such as the Department for Transport, also usually attend.

Meetings and documents:

Membership

The SEIEG is composed of a core team, and a wider membership. The core team includes:

Prof Richard Horne FRS	Chair	British Antarctic Survey
Dr Mike Hapgood	Former Chair	Rutherford Appleton Lab.
Dr Mario Bisi		Rutherford Appleton Lab.
Dr Jonathan Eastwood		Imperial College London
Mr Mark Gibbs		Met Office
Prof Jim Wild		Lancaster University
Dr Simon Machin		Met Office

The core team draws on the expertise of the wider membership.

Key Research Findings

Members of SEIEG have published influential reports and research papers which have been independently assessed by international peer review. These include the Royal Academy of Engineering Report on extreme space weather (Cannon et al., 2013), assessments of the economic impact of a severe space weather event (Eastwood et al., 2018, Oughton et al., 2019) and the development of realistic worst-case scenarios (Hapgood et al., 2021).

These research findings have been used to support the UK National Risk Register (2020, 2023), the National Space Strategy (2021) and the BEIS severe space weather preparedness strategy (2021).

Origins

More information about the origins of the SEIEG is available here.