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Research and development call currently open

The European Weather Cloud is the cloud-based collaboration platform for meteorological application development and operations in Europe, enabling the digital transformation of the European Meteorological Infrastructure.

Last Updated

16 April 2024

Published on

15 April 2024

Research and development (R&D) applications regarding the European Weather Cloud are open to researchers from any publicly funded organisation located in EUMETSAT’s member states. The applications should be submitted before 30 June 2024 for a project start in October 2024. The projects can have a maximum length of up to three years, after which a new proposal would be required.

R&D projects should take the form of scientific or technical studies investigating ways to improve the use of EUMETSAT data or products. Their results should be broadly applicable, provide proven benefits to EUMETSAT member states, and should be of interest to the general scientific community.

The study should improve the quality of EUMETSAT data or products by harnessing member states’ research potential. The aim should be to jointly solve known problems which may be difficult to achieve by the EUMETSAT Secretariat and satellite application facilities (SAFs) alone. The project should demonstrate the value of products arising from research, especially for innovative uses of EUMETSAT satellite data in relevant societal sectors.

A further goal for a research study is to foster the development of new products for existing and new applications in various areas. The research could also support the product development work carried out by the EUMETSAT Secretariat and the SAF network, particularly in EUMETSAT member states. This includes building flexible prototype product-generation and -testing mechanisms for Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) and later EUMETSAT Polar System -Second Generation (EPS-SG) as well as the development of shared tools, for example for use in nowcasting.

Studies could also facilitate learning about new methods/techniques (including machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI), processors and applications based on EUMETSAT data. A special focus is on the use of the EWC to explore new ways of using cloud infrastructure, for example for distributed mass data reprocessing or the application of AI/ML methods.

Finally, the research projects should promote the customisation of EUMETSAT products for special applications. A special focus is on the last mile of EUMETSAT data to users in applications. The objective is to increase the use of EUMETSAT data that requires addressing specific user/customer needs, such as in the transport/aviation sector (questions of climate change impact from sector specific emissions, safety impact from changing hazard patterns) or in the energy sector (specific applications in the renewable energy potential, availability and exploitation).

Who can apply and how?

The European Weather Cloud research & development call is open to applications from public institutions such as public services and academia in EUMETSAT member states.

An organisation or consortium represented by a Principal Investigator from the leading organisation needs to submit a proposal along with an extended abstract (max. 5 pages) to the EUMETSAT Secretariat via the EUMETSAT EWC call form. The application timeline is as follows:

Submission deadline	30 June 2024
Technical feasibility check by EUMETSAT (may expect interaction)	July 2024
Start of evaluation by EUMETSAT delegate bodies	August 2024
Decision on applications and information to applicants	October 2024

Further information on the European Weather Cloud can be found on the EWC website or the Knowledge base.

For more information on this call and EUMETSAT data, contact our User Service Helpdesk or look on our User Portal.

Available resources

Applicants will be granted infrastructure only. Successful applicants are granted access to computing infrastructure in the European Weather Cloud close to the EUMETSAT and ECMWF data holdings. The infrastructure includes virtual machines (VM), object storage, , and a shared file system. Applications must contain justified estimations of resources required. Projects are expected to range from 50 to 100 vCPUs, 400-800 GB of RAM, 50-100 TB of storage and 4-8 vGPUs.

Should a project exhaust its resource allocation before its completion, the principal investigator can, at any time, apply for an allocation from any resources remaining in the reserve. The project application form can be used again to request additional resources, including a justification for the additional resources are being requested. This form is located on the EUMETSAT website.

The applicants can also include resources from both EUMETSAT and the ECMWF. The same conditions and evaluation process with Special Project applications apply for ECMWF resources, and a separate application is required subsequently to allocate resources on the ECMWF side of the European Weather Cloud.

The following guide is useful for estimating different types of resources:

vCPUs are currently 2400MHz. This may change in the future.
vGPU is counted 1/8 of NVIDIA GPU RTX A6000. Available GPU VM flavours are listed in thisECMWF Knowledge base article. When estimating GPU resources, please pay attention to the required number of vCPUs to deploy the VMs.
Object storage (S3) is the most suitable for large datasets and when the same data need to be accessed from several computing workloads (eg VM, containers, Jupyter notebooks). Object storage can be also used to import and export the data outside EWC. Object storage buckets do not naturally appear as traditional file system. Please consult Knowledge base articleObject storage: how to use S3 buckets for more details.
A shared file system (SFS) can be used to share the same directories across several VMs. SFS shares are typically mounted to VMs with NFS and appears as a typical file system. SFS shares can’t be shared outside the EWC tenancy.
Block storage can be mounted on VMs as a local volume. It provides good performance for small datasets but can’t be shared with other VMs or outside the EWC tenancy.

Criteria for proposal evaluation

The following criteria should be taken into consideration when responding to this research and development call:

Relevance to the objectives
Scientific and technical quality
Overall maturity of the proposal considering the feasibility of implementation
Justification of the resources requested including compatibility with the planned resource
Wide applicability of the outcome to the member states
Enhancement of interdisciplinary collaboration
Use of EUMETSAT data and software will also be considered in the evaluation process.

The evaluation board consists of three representatives from the EUMETSAT Secretariat and up to three representatives from the EUMETSAT member states. The committee will be chaired by the EUMETSAT Chief Scientist.

Fast track for small projects

EUMETSAT reserves resources for small fast-track projects which can last for a maximum of one year. These resources can be applied at any time by submitting the application form along with an extended abstract. The EUMETSAT Secretariat will evaluate the applications following the same criteria that is used for a normal application and makes the decision based on the evaluation and resource availability.

Fast track projects shall not exceed the following resource limits:

50 vCPUs
320 GB RAM
10 TB Block storage (VM local volumes)
10 TB shared file system (NFS)
20 TB object storage (S3)

4 vGPUs (1 vGPU = 1/8 of NVIDIA GPU RTX A6000)

Project reporting

EUMETSAT expects to receive annual progress reports (except for one-year projects) by three months after each project year, and a final report at the latest three months after the end of a project. The report can be submitted via the website using templates for annual progress and the final report. All reports received will be published on the website.

Acknowledgement for using EWC resources

Project leaders and partners must acknowledge the resources provided by the European Weather Cloud in presentations and publications of project results with the following wording: "We gratefully acknowledge the use of the European Weather Cloud in the context of this research."