DestinE for Belgium

Destination Earth

Destination Earth (DestinE) and its development of digital earth twins are key to predicting the effects and building resilience to climate-change.

The Destination Earth (DestinE) is a flagship initiative of the European Commission to develop a highly accurate digital model of the Earth on a global scale. This model will monitor, simulate, and predict the interaction between natural phenomena and human activities. It will contribute to achieving the objectives of the twin transition, green and digital as part of the European Commission's Green Deal and Digital Strategy.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) are the three organisations entrusted by the EU to achieve this unprecedented endeavour for climate, weather and computing sciences.

The first phase of the programme – its initial implementation phase – will be completed by June 2024. It will focus on configuring, deploying and demonstrating the initial infrastructure building blocks that will support Destination Earth in its future phases. The initial focus of the DTE will be on the effects of climate change and extreme weather events, their socioeconomic impact and possible adaptation and mitigation strategies. Two initial twins will be created, both of which will integrate data on oceans, atmosphere, land, hydrology and sea ice.

Go check out the dedicated website

The contribution organisations also each have a website on Destination Earth:

• Main page by the European Commission (EC);
• The websites by the three partners: 
  • European Space Agency (ESA)
  • European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)
  • European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT)

Funding – Calls

Some calls related to DestinE relevant for Belgian actors:

Activities

Projects of Belgian partners within the framework of DestinE:

• The French Meteorological Service Météo-France and partners from 22 European countries (includes KMI Belgium), will develop a configurable capability for an interactive European monitoring and prediction framework from continental to city scales in response to meteorological, hydrological and air quality extremes.  The project is part of “On Demand Extremes Digital Twin project”.
  » More information
   
• The Belgian research organization VITO will use Destination Earth’s Climate Adaptation digital twin to create an interactive tool providing high resolution urban heat maps and predict their evolution under future climate conditions.
  » More information
   

Members of the Belgium Destination Coordination Group (DCG)

The DCG will foster cooperation and synergies at European, national, and regional level and to ensure close involvement of Member States in the co-design, planning, monitoring and evolution of the Destination Earth initiative.  Representatives for Belgium in DCG:

• Jo Van Valckenborgh – Digitaal Vlaanderen
• Piet Termonia – Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium

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