Enabling Solar Flare Forecasting at an Unprecedented Level: the FLARECAST Project

We attempt a brief but informative description of the Flare Likelihood And Region Eruption Forecasting (FLARECAST) project, European Commission's first large-scale investment to explore the limits of reliability and accuracy for the forecasting of major solar flares. The consortium, objectives, and first results of the project - featuring an openly accessible, interactive flare forecasting facility by the end of 2017 - will be outlined. In addition, we will refer to the so-called "explorative research" element of project, aiming to connect solar flares with coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and possibly pave the way for CME, or eruptive flare, prediction. We will also emphasize the FLARECAST modus operandi, namely the diversity of expertise within the consortium that independently aims to science, infrastructure development and dissemination, both to stakeholders and to the general public. Concluding, we will underline that the FLARECAST project responds squarely to the joint COSPAR - ILWS Global Roadmap to shield society from the adversities of space weather, addressing its primary goal and, in particular, its Research Recommendations 1, 2 and 4, Teaming Recommendations II and III, and Collaboration Recommendations A, B, and D. The FLARECAST project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 640216.