The European Commission (EC) has announced the Destination Earth initiative to creat a digital model of the Earth to combat the effects of climate change.
Destination Earth (DestinE) and its development of digital earth twins are key to predicting the effects and building resilience to climate-change according to the EC.
DestinE aims to develop – on a global scale – a highly accurate digital model of the Earth to monitor and predict the interaction between natural phenomena and human activities. As part of the EC’s Green Deal and Digital Strategy, DestinE will contribute to achieving the objectives of the twin transition, green and digital.
Access and interact
Users of DestinE, including non-scientific experts, will be able to access and interact with vast amounts of Earth system and socio-economic data in order to:
Perform highly accurate, interactive and dynamic simulations of the Earth system, informed by rich observational datasets: for example allowing to focus on thematic domains of societal relevance such as the regional impacts of climate change, natural hazards, marine ecosystems or urban spaces.
Improve prediction capabilities to maximize impact: for example to protect biodiversity, manage water, renewable energy and food resources, and mitigate disaster risks in a changing world.
Support EU policy-making and implementation: for example, to assess the impact of existing environmental policies and legislative measures and support future evidence-based policy-making.
Exploit the potential of distributed and high performance computing (HPC) and data handling at extreme scale: for example through an interactive platform that will host complex digital twins and comprehensive toolkits to develop and operate analytics-based models, with full access to vast amounts of diverse data.
