The digital twin will enable monitoring, modelling, and prediction of natural and human activity apart from creating and testing scenarios for more sustainable development
The Destination Earth initiative involves creating a new digital twin of the Earth. (Credit: Pete Linforth from Pixabay)
The European Commission (EC) and its partners have launched the Destination Earth initiative, which involves creating a new digital twin of the Earth to help tackle climate change and protect nature.
Backed by initial funding of €150m from the Digital Europe Programme until mid-2024, the initiative’s objective is to build a highly accurate digital model of the planet.
The partnering organisations of the EC in the initiative are the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).
According to the EC, the digital twin of the Earth will enable monitoring, modelling, and prediction of natural and human activity, besides creating and testing scenarios for more sustainable development.
The Commission said that public sector users will be the first to get digital services, high-quality information, scenarios, models, forecasts, and visualisations through the Destination Earth programme. Gradually, they will be provided to scientific communities, the private sector, as well as the general public.
Europe fit for the Digital Age Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager said: “Destination Earth will improve our understanding of climate change and enable solutions at global, regional and local level. This initiative is a clear example that we cannot fight climate change without digital technologies.
“For example, the digital modelling of the Earth will help to predict major environmental degradation with unprecedented reliability.”
By the end of 2024, the Destination Earth system will be made up of a core service platform operated by the ESA, a data lake operated by EUMETSAT, and digital twins developed by ECMWF.
The EC said that the three partnering organisations will publish tenders for purchasing various components that need to be integrated into the Destination Earth system in the spring of this year.
European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton said: “With Destination Earth, we are building on Europe’s strong cards. From Artificial Intelligence, cloud computing, high-speed connectivity networks to our successful Copernicus Earth observation programme and our world-leading EuroHPC supercomputers, we are combining our assets in order to make our future more safe and secure.”