DestinE ASpot

Destination Earth

 

Destination Earth is an initiative of the European Commission aiming to develop a high precision digital model of the Earth to model, monitor and simulate natural phenomena and related human activities

DestinE ASpot
DestinE ASpot

Destination Earth (DestinE) is a major initiative of the European Commission through DG CONNECT. It aims to develop a very high precision digital model of planet Earth (a ‘digital twin’) to monitor and predict environmental change and human impact to support sustainable development

Last Updated

15 March 2024

Published on

21 March 2022

EUMETSAT, the ECMWF and ESA are the three entrusted agencies selected by the EC to implement Destination Earth over the next 7 – 10 years. Each entity will bring its own expertise and strength to support the initiative.

While EUMETSAT is responsible for the DestinE Data Lake, ESA is responsible for the DestinE Core Service Platform and the ECMWF for the two initial digital twins on extreme weather and climate adaptation.

The Data Lake and its connections to the digital twins (ECMWF), the Core Service Platform (ESA) and many additional data sets

How will DestinE be used?

DestinE will support tackling complex environmental challenges and help policy-makers 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.

What is EUMETSAT’s role?

EUMETSAT’s role of providing the end-to-end data lake service in DestinE is based on the organisation’s extensive and unique expertise in developing and managing multi-channel data services, which provide access to weather and climate-related data and information. The focus is on bringing users to the data to allow distributed online processing, as opposed to having to download data.

Within this role, EUMETSAT has been entrusted with the end-to-end responsibility for the design, establishment, testing, operations and procurement of the multi-cloud DestinE Data Lake and Data Warehouse.

Access to Destination Earth data and other cloud-based processing data services that will be available in the Data Lake 

The data lake will, as one core service, incorporate a large diversity of different data spaces. This will also include data from EUMETSAT’s own Earth observation satellite systems, as well as from the European Copernicus Sentinel missions, ESA missions, and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

User journey to access Destination Earth data and services 

Those data will serve as input to the emerging digital twins engines and AI and machine learning algorithms that will both produce what is called DestinE data and information. 

The second core service of the data lake is that it will store all DestinE data and information and make it accessible for decision-making and other users, initially via the core service platform and directly in later phases.

Flood risk use case for Destination Earth highlighting connections to the digital twins and additional datasets via the Data Lake 

Destination Earth is at the crossroads between two major European endeavours: the Green Deal and the Digital Strategy. The initiative will contribute to achieving the objectives of the twin transition, green and digital.

Find out more about Destination Earth