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ECMWF Director-General, Florence Rabier, highlighted that no single state or entity could assume the technological and scientific challenges of developing interactive, higher resolution digital twins. “It will be another example of European partnership and we need that, with everything that it’s happening around us” adding that “this initiative will stand on the shoulders of giants, because so much has been achieved already by the partner institutions, the Copernicus services and the Member States”.  

The event was also an opportunity for users to address some of the many questions around Destination Earth with the main stakeholders in charge of the project.

ECMWF Director of Destination Earth, Peter Bauer, described the synergies of the initiative with the technology sector, the Earth-system science community, and the high level European and national operating services.

Asked about concrete applications of the digital twins, he put the example of a renewable energy company needing to make sure their infrastructures “are fit for purpose in decades to come” and protected from extreme weather in the shorter term.

Destination Earth’s Project manager at ESA, Eric Montjoux, presented the key features of the core platform, explaining how the “front end” will allow users to retrieve the data that they need. However, he noted that there are many challenges to face, given that the digital twins will generate 10 times the amount of data compared to current services.

Lothar Wolf, Destination Earth Programme Manager at EUMETSAT, detailed the key requests of the complex data lake that will feed the digital twins. He also highlighted the extremely close cooperation between the three leading agencies that is needed to release the first visible results as early as 2024.