Technical Article

Application usability levels: a framework for tracking project product progress

¹ Space Sciences Department, The Aerospace Corporation, 14745 Lee Road, Chantilly, VA 20151, USA
² Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, 595 Charles Young Drive East, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1567, USA
³ Catholic University of America, 620 Michigan Ave NE, Washington, DC 20064, USA
⁴ NASA GSFC, Heliophysics Science Division Greenbelt, Code 674, MD 20771, USA
⁵ School of Science, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia
⁶ NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
⁷ University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, P.O. Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307, USA
⁸ Departamento de Física y Matemáticas, Universidad de Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), Calle el Escorial, 19-21, 28805 Alcalá de Henares, Spain
⁹ Space Vehicles Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Kirtland Air Force Base, NM 871175776, USA
¹⁰ Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, University of Michigan – North Campus, 2455 Hayward St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
¹¹ Finnish Meteorological Institute, P.O. Box 503, Helsinki 00101, Finland
¹² Space Science Division, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC 20375, USA
¹³ Space Weather Services, Bureau of Meteorology, P.O. Box 413, Darlinghurst, NSW 1300, Australia
¹⁴ Physics Department, University of Texas at Arlington, 502 Yates St., Box 1905, Arlington, TX 76019, USA
¹⁵ School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
¹⁶ NorthWest Research Associates, 3380 Mitchell Lane, Boulder, CO 80301-2245, USA
¹⁷ Met Office, Fitzroy Road, Exeter, Devon, EX1 3PB, UK
¹⁸ RAL Space, Science & Technology Facilities Council – Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Campus, Oxfordshire, OX11 0QX, UK
¹⁹ Center for Space Physics, Boston University, 725 Common Wealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA
²⁰ Space Science and Applications, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA

^* Corresponding author: alexa.j.halford@aero.org

Received: 6 June 2019
Accepted: 19 July 2019

Abstract

The space physics community continues to grow and become both more interdisciplinary and more intertwined with commercial and government operations. This has created a need for a framework to easily identify what projects can be used for specific applications and how close the tool is to routine autonomous or on-demand implementation and operation. We propose the Application Usability Level (AUL) framework and publicizing AULs to help the community quantify the progress of successful applications, metrics, and validation efforts. This framework will also aid the scientific community by supplying the type of information needed to build off of previously published work and publicizing the applications and requirements needed by the user communities. In this paper, we define the AUL framework, outline the milestones required for progression to higher AULs, and provide example projects utilizing the AUL framework. This work has been completed as part of the activities of the Assessment of Understanding and Quantifying Progress working group which is part of the International Forum for Space Weather Capabilities Assessment.