The last years have seen a golden age in the relationship between the European space-science (and especially space weather) research community and the European Commission (EC). On the one side, the space community has advised the EC on what is the current state of the art and on future research needs. On the other side, the EC has funded and in other ways fostered the scientific activities in this field. The future, upcoming calls already foresee a space science component. This session aims to provide a forum for past and present projects to describe their results, sharing them with other projects and allowing a cross-cut fusion of expertise. We further aim to facilitate the exchange of ideas and results between different ongoing projects. Last but not least, the session aims to provide meaningful input to interested researchers seeking future opportunities for interacting with the EC and to the EC and other European funding agencies, such as the European Space Agency (ESA), to collect feedback by the community.

Numerous empirical and physics-based models are used to study the ionosphere and the magnetosphere; they also play a fundamental role in space weather forecasting. However the accuracy of these models is limited and depends on both the physics relevant to a particular region as well as the model implementation. Two approaches can help to better understand model constraints: comparison between physics-based and empirical models, and comparison between numerical models and ground-based and spacecraft observations.

This session will provide a forum to present and discuss the latest results of model validation and verification. All types of models are welcome, e.g. empirical, fluid, hybrid kinetic, and fully kinetic models. The purpose of this session is to collect various models from Europe and other countries and to give an overview of their capabilities and accuracy.