A milestone in digital Earth modelling

Destination Earth is a flagship initiative of the European Commission to develop a highly accurate digital twin, or replica, of the Earth system and is set to revolutionise our understanding of natural phenomena, hazards and the impact of human activities related to climate and environmental change.

Leveraging the most advanced digital twin technologies, data analytics and AI, as well as recent investments and advances in high-performance computing, Destination Earth offers unprecedented levels of accuracy, resolution and interactivity, enabling users to explore how the Earth system will evolve under different ‘what if’ scenarios for several decades ahead.

This empowers policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders to make informed decisions in designing accurate climate change adaptation strategies and effective mitigation measures.

It also forms the basis for effective European adaptation strategies to support the green transition, helping the EU achieve its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, and the implementation of the Green Deal and Digital Strategy.

Destination Earth is led by the European Commission and is implemented by ESA together with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat). More than 100 public and private partners are involved in building the system.

ESA develops and operates the DestinE Platform, an open and secure cloud environment that supports DestinE data exploitation with the aim to meet the needs of a large and diverse community that includes citizens, scientists and academics, commercial entities and policymakers.

From today, selected groups of users accessing the DestinE Platform can explore and process the data generated by the first two digital twins’ simulations. It will continue to evolve to provide more services, tools and applications to cover the growing needs of its users.

Simonetta Cheli, ESA Director of Earth Observation Programmes, said, “Destination Earth is a flagship initiative that builds on European modelling capabilities and also on Earth observation data. We, at ESA, are thrilled to contribute to this new era and proud to be responsible for the DestinE Platform.

“The platform provides a rich range of applications and services, which will progressively become accessible to everybody and creates a new flexible and scalable ecosystem.”

For more information about Destination Earth and its ongoing developments, visit Destination Earth.