Multi mission elements and their use in enhanced management reporting at EUMETSAT

Abstract

The increasing trend within operations at EUMETSAT is towards combining resources used across different satellite programs where possible into Multi-Mission Elements (MMEs). While the spacecraft and their directly related operations by nature are program specific, where possible an MME is used to provide services. The MME concept can apply to a particular infrastructure, software, team of people, or a complete facility comprising a hardware and software solution along with a maintenance team. Examples within EUMETSAT include Archive and User Services, Dissemination, Performance Monitoring and Infrastructure components. Multi-mission elements bring mainly advantages to agencies, although they can require higher initial effort. Additionally a new program may have requirements which conflict with the existing core design. The transition to Multi-Mission, especially in agencies where space programs are already in an advanced state, might require higher effort, especially with regard to software and hardware development, maintenance and associated costs. Nevertheless, the latter are reduced in the long term, when one common platform is used instead of one per mission. MMEs can be specified in a service to be provided to future Satellite programs, drawing on experience and lessons learnt with the aim of avoiding the re-invention of the wheel. Multi mission also means consistency across programs of user interfaces (e.g. web-based services). Training efforts and costs are much lower, especially considering that employees often migrate between missions: in this way they are already familiar with most of the systems and will only need dedicated training for specific mission activities. A specific example of an MME which is currently undergoing an evolution at EUMETSAT will be the focus of this paper: the Performance Reporting Evolution Project (PREP).This will provide enhanced and automated reporting to the Operations Teams including specific Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for Management. The aim of the PREP is to upgrade and integrate the hardware and applications into a enterprise solution, which can easily provide similar services to new programs. The PREP will take well established MME tools that are used for near-real time operational monitoring, and evolve them into a solution that can also be used to create reports on the EUMETSAT KPIs in Key Reporting Areas, namely completeness, timeliness and quality of disseminated meteorological imagery and products. By building a modular hardware and software solution based around a core service with plug in components for individual missions, flexibility is ensured. Through this, many of the potential challenges listed above can be overcome. Space programs and their collaboration with external agencies are in continuous growth. Together with the benefits of MMEs within the agency itself, the importance of a common interface with external partners has become very relevant. In fact, agencies (public and private) are moving towards a higher international collaboration which start mission-specific, but tends to expand. MMEs help to make international collaboration more homogeneous and easier to be deal with, from management and technical point of view. With regard to Performance reporting, it is essential to provide EUMETSAT management with accurate and timely information, to ensure the commitments to its Member States, Operational Partners, and the European Commission are being met and exceeded. This paper will discuss in particular the various aspects of developing the multi-mission reporting tools under the PREP, in order to reach these goals.