The HORIZON 2020 project 'HESPERIA' is producing two novel solar energetic particle (SEP) operational forecasting tools based upon proven concepts (UMASEP, REleASE). At the same time it will advance our understanding of the physical mechanisms that result into high-energy SEP events through the systematic exploitation of the high-energy g -ray observations of the Fermi mission and other novel published datasets (PAMELA; AMS), together with in situ SEP measurements near 1 AU. Furthermore, HESPERIA will explore the possibility to incorporate the derived results into future innovative space weather services. Publicly available software to invert neutron monitor observations of relativistic SEPs to infer the release timescales of relativistic SEPs at the Sun and the characteristics of their transport in the interplanetary space will be provided for the first time. In order to achieve these goals HESPERIA will exploit already available large datasets stored into databases such as the Neutron Monitor DataDase (NMDB) and SEPServer that have been developed under FP7 projects from 2008 to 2013. The structure of the HESPERIA project, its main objectives, as well as the added value to SEP research will be presented and discussed.