At present, there are fourteen Regional Warning Centres distributed around the globe. These centres are located in China (Beijing) , USA (Boulder), Russia (Moscow), India (New Delhi ), Canada (Ottawa), Czech Republic (Prague), Japan (Tokyo), Australia (Sydney), Sweden (Lund), Belgium (Brussels), Poland (Warsaw), South Africa (Hermanus), South Korea (Jeju) and Brazil (São José dos Campos). The European Space Agency (Noordwijk) is a collaborative expert centre providing a venue for data and product exchange for activities in Europe. In addition, the Associate Warning Centre in France (Toulouse) provides specialized services to customers, and is affiliated through RWC Belgium. A data exchange schedule operates with each centre providing and relaying data to the other centres. The centre in Boulder plays a special role as "World Warning Agency", acting as a hub for data exchange and forecasts.

The data exchanged are highly varied in nature and in format, ranging from simple forecasts or coded information up to more complicated information such as images. An important strength of the data exchange system is that RWCs often have access to data from unique instrumentation available from the scientific community in its region. Exchange through ISES makes these data available to the wider international scientific and user community. The prime reason for the existence of the Regional Warning Centres is to provide services to the scientific and user communities within their own regions. These services usually consist of forecasts or warnings of disturbances to the solar terrestrial environment. The range of the locations of RWCs results in a very large diversity in the users of these forecasts. An important feature of the ISES system is that RWCs are able to construct and direct their services to the specific needs of their own customers.

Users of the services of RWCs include: high frequency (HF) radio communicators; mineral surveyors using geophysical techniques; power line and pipeline authorities; operators of satellites and a host of commercial and scientific users. The increasing sophistication and sensitivity of modern technology has resulted in a steadily expanding range of applications where a knowledge of the solar terrestrial environment is important.