Building a highly accurate digital twin of the Earth
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Destination Earth
Destination Earth is a flagship initiative of the European Commission to develop a highly-accurate digital model of the Earth (a digital twin of the Earth) to model, monitor and simulate natural phenomena, hazards and the related human activities. These groundbreaking features assist users in designing accurate and actionable adaptation strategies and mitigation measures.
DestinE unlocks the potential of digital modelling of the Earth system at a level that represents a real breakthrough in terms of accuracy, local detail, access-to-information speed and interactivity.
By pushing the limits of computing and climate sciences, DestinE is an essential pillar of the European Commission’s efforts towards the Green Deal and Digital Strategy.
How DestinE will be used
DestinE will support tackling complex environmental challenges to:
- monitor and simulate the Earth’s system developments (land, marine, atmosphere, biosphere) and human interventions;
- anticipate environmental disasters and resultant socio-economic crises to save lives and avoid large economic downturns;
- enable the development and testing of scenarios for ever more sustainable development.
Destination Earth System
DestinE will allow users to access thematic information, services, models, scenarios, simulations, forecasts and visualisations.
The main components of the DestinE system are:
Core Service Platform
The platform will provide evidence-based decision-making tools, applications and services, based on an open, flexible, and secure cloud-based computing infrastructure.
Data Lake
The data lake will bring together data from ESA, EUMETSAT, ECMWF as well as from Copernicus, and many other diverse sources, with new data from the Digital Twins. It will allow discovery and data access as well as big data processing in the cloud.
Digital Twins and Digital Twin Engine
DestinE is creating several digital replicas covering different aspects of the Earth system and based on state-of-the-art simulations and observations. ECMWF is implementing the Digital Twin Engine, the complex software and data services needed for Earth System digital replicas, as well as the first two digital twins; Climate Change Adaptation, which will provide multidecadal simulations, and the Weather-induced Extremes twin, with both high-resolution forecasts and on-demand simulations.
DestinE Timeline
DestinE will be developed through the following key milestones:
Official launch event of the initiative following the signing of the Contribution Agreements earlier in 2021.
Development of the main components begins.
All the components of the system (Core Service Platform, Data Lake, Digital Twin Engine) have been developed. The Core Service Platform and Data Lake will be transferred into operation. Demonstration of the first two digital twins on Weather-Induced Extremes and Climate Change Adaptation and the open core platform.
Further enhancement of the DestinE system and integration of additional digital twins and related services.
A "full" digital replica of the Earth
Who are DestinE’s Partners
European Commission
Leads and coordinates the implementation efforts among a core group of leading European organisations which will be responsible for developing the main elements of the initiative.
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European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts ECMWF
Responsible for the creation of the first two digital twins; Climate Adaptation and Weather-induced Extremes, as well as the creation of the Digital Twin Engine.
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The European Space Agency ESA
Responsible for the DestinE Open Core Service Platform, the user entry to the DestinE System. Based on a multi-cloud infrastructure, the platform will provide access to data, applications and services.
European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites
Responsible for the DestinE Data Lake : built from geographically distributed physical elements, offering discovery & data access to a large data portfolio (Digital Twins data and more) and big data processing near data.
