AVIDOS 2.0 - Forecasting and Nowcasting of Radiation Exposure On-Board Aircraft

AVIDOS is a web service of the Seibersdorf Laboratories federated with ESA's Space Weather portal, accessible under: http://swe.ssa.esa.int/web/guest/avidos-federated.

AVIDOS is informational and educational online software for the assessment of cosmic radiation exposure at flight altitudes during quiet and extraordinary solar conditions. It estimates route radiation doses for flights between any two locations and provides a comparison of assessed exposure with the worldwide average of natural background radiation on Earth. In the latest version of AVIDOS 2.0, we have implemented forecasting of radiation effects due to Galactic Cosmic Radiation (GCR) for up to one year. We have based the GCR forecast on a prediction of sunspot numbers provided by SILSO system of Royal Observatory of Belgium. Forecasting of radiation effects at aviation altitudes due to solar energetic particle events (SPE) is extremely challenging owing the complex SPE characteristics and their random, currently not predictable, occurrence. With a new development, AVIDOS 2.0 attempts to nowcast radiation exposure at flight altitudes due to SPE using three components: Monte Carlo simulation modelling, real-time data from Oulu neutron monitor station, and real-time GLE-alert system ANeMoS.