The European Commission’s ambitious, flagship Destination Earth (DestinE) initiative reached a significant milestone this month with the conclusion of its second and beginning of its third phase. The 5th Destination Earth User eXchange, held from 9-10 June in Brussels, marked this transition, bringing together a diverse, pan-European community and attracting over 350 onsite and 300 online participants. The high-profile event provided a platform for scientific, technological and policy experts to reflect on the progress and strategic direction for Phase Three of the initiative and beyond.

The event underscored the power of collaboration, which has been at the heart of DestinE since its inception. Hosted by ECMWF and co-organised with ESA and EUMETSAT, the 5^th User eXchange was delivered under the leadership of DG CNECT. For the first time the event was organised in collaboration with a national partner institution, the Royal Meteorological institute of Belgium (RMI). To date, over 150 organisations from across Europe have contributed to the initiative, highlighting its success in fostering a united European effort.  

Setting the scene: vision, system and next steps 

The event was launched by Executive Vice-President of the European Commission Henna Virkkunen, Finnish Commissioner responsible for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, who presented DestinE as an example for how scientific progress supports decision-making and stressed the value of DestinE for key policy priorities of the EU.

Virkkunen concluded that investing in this cutting-edge research and infrastructure is fundamental to Europe’s digital sovereignty and global competitiveness, underscoring that sustainability and resilience are mutually reinforcing pillars for the future.

Kilian Gross, Director for Enabling and Emerging Technologies at the EU Commission’s DG CNECT, then followed, celebrating the growth of DestinE in only a handful of years since the official start of the initiative in 2022.

Gross connected Destination Earth to the European efforts in chips production, data centers and artificial intelligence. “DestinE is one of the successful examples you find in the Apply AI strategy because it showcases that we can apply AI, and use AI for the good of society, for economic purposes, for competitiveness but, above all, for our societies as a whole,” he said.

Marc Vanhoolsbeck, Director of the Federal, Interfederal and International Coordination Department of the Belgian Science Policy Office BELSPO followed with highlighting the need for systems such as DestinE, using the specific example of the devastating floods experienced in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany in 2021. 

“If DestinE wouldn’t exist, we should invent it,” said ECMWF Director-General Florian Pappenberger, reinforcing the message in his opening address. “Destination Earth is showing that Europe can compete at the frontier of digital twin technology and AI. Europe is producing the first Earth system digital twins and AI models in the world; we are competitive, we have the technology, we have the science, we have the brains. These capabilities will be increasingly shaped by AI, but they are rooted in the world-leading prediction systems and data we have delivered in Europe over the last decades” he said, continuing “I’m proud that ECMWF is one of the entrusted entities, alongside ESA and EUMETSAT, and that we are partnering with over 100 institutions across Europe from public institutions to SMEs to implement DestinE”. He also emphasised the tight and productive cooperation with ESA and EUMETSAT on implementing DestinE in general and for organising the User eXchange in particular. 

The DestinE Journey: progress and highlights 

The opening statements were followed by a panel discussion gathering Charalampos Tsitlakidis DestinE Programme Lead at DG CNECT, Irina Sandu, Director for Destination Earth at ECMWF, Lothar Wolf, Programme Manager for DestinE at EUMETSAT and Kathrin Hintze, Deputy Project Manager for DestinE at ESA.

The session provided an overview of recent progress and highlighted the ambition for the next phase of DestinE. As part of the discussion, Tsitlakidis emphasised how  DestinE’s vision is now becoming a reality:  

“We see the vision of Destination Earth really taking shape now. Now users from the national weather services, policymakers, the public sector authorities, scientists and the private sector can really use high resolution climate change simulations. And these are tailored, with the what if scenarios. So, for the first time we have these capabilities in Europe to be used from a broad audience to specialists and this is not something trivial. We’ve made a lot of effort and we are seeing the results. But more than that, we are progressing in Europe’s capacity to mobilise and connect strategic assets, such as high-performance computing, the European Earth Observation ecosystem, and artificial intelligence, because this is a true European effort”. 

Asked by moderator Simon Pickard what was she proudest about from what’s been achieved, Irina Sandu said that the best part was delivering concrete capabilities in support of preparedness and resilience to extreme events and climate change in collaboration with all the partners across Europe: “Over the last months we have been focusing in operationalising this digital twin technology – that we are pioneering in Europe– and which brings together Earth-system models, impact-sector applications and a complex software layer on the world-class supercomputing capabilities of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking”.

A central point of the conversations was how DestinE has moved from an idea towards operationalisation, with complex simulation frameworks now running at scale and delivering high-resolution Earth system and impact sector information, that supports preparedness and resilience while also providing high-quality training data to Europe’s AI ecosystem, including the AI factories.

DestinE foundations: the digital twins and the data 

The next session explored in more detail advances in the Weather-Induced Extremes Digital Twin (Extremes DT), the Climate Change Adaptation Digital Twin (Climate DT) and pilot services based on DestinE data such as flood risk management and heat information. These new capabilities are expanding and complementing existing capabilities at national and European level.

In her insightful presentation, Marianne Thyrring, Director of the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), emphasized that DMI sees strong value in Extremes DT high-resolution forecasts as the next step in strengthening operational forecasting for situation-specific predictions of extreme weather, by complementing existing capabilities.

Participants were also introduced to different ways of accessing and exploiting digital twin data. For example, ECMWF’s Polytope service enables tailored access to digital twin data at the original resolution. Prismera, an application available on the DestinE Platform, allows users to visualise selected examples of the storylines produced with the Climate DT.

At the end of the first day, a “fireside chat” with high-level representatives from five Directorates General of the European Commission focused on expectations for DestinE and its future applications.  

Grazyna Piesiewicz, Head of Unit for High-Performance Computing at the DG CNECT pointed out that the next phase will further enhance user uptake and ensure long-term sustainability for DestinE.  

Michela Matuella, Director of DG ECHO commented that the emergency response community is already benefitting from DestinE data and stressed the urgent need for AI-driven, digital twin tools to translate data into actionable and real-time knowledge for operations on the ground, and gave the wildfire season as an example of how emergency response can benefit from the new knowledge provided by the digital twins.  

Christoph Kautz, Director for Satellite Navigation and Earth Observation at DG DEFIS, highlighted the many discussions and initiatives taking place to foster the synergies between the Copernicus programme and its users and the opportunities opened by DestinE.

Elina Bardram, Director for Adaptation and Resilience at DG CLIMA, commended the teams involved in this initiative that brings science closer to policy-making. Bardram called for a European policy that advances the preparation for the impacts of climate change and said that DestinE can play a key role in providing this anticipatory information to policymakers. Ariane Labat, Head of the Digital Transformation Unit at DG INTPA completed the panel by articulating not only interest in the new capabilities afforded by DestinE, but also giving concrete examples where the system was already used.  

The programme of first day concluded with a keynote address by Maarten van Aalst, Director of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute KNMI. Van Aalst emphasised the key role of national meteorological services as trusted brokers of weather and climate information, helping to translate forecasts and climate knowledge into action that protects societies. His inspiring speech set the scene for many exchanges during the remainder of the User eXchange.  

Following the oral sessions, exchanges continued during a poster session. The posters can be accessed from the event page. The programme also included “demonstrator stations” from several partners that invited the participants to understand and test the services.  

Day 2: AI, innovation and impact-sector applications 

The programme of the second day explored key innovations in DestinE, including continued development of AI-based Earth system models, modular components and interactive features such as chat-based tools and emulators capable of reproducing aspects of the Climate Digital Twin. 

Hands-on sessions for some of the applications demonstrated how to use AI tools already integrated into the DestinE Platform, with contributions from ECMWF, ESA, EUMETSAT and partner organisations. 

In the afternoon, participants explored how DestinE contributes to sectors most affected by climate change and extreme events, including energy, the water cycle, disaster risk management and urban policies. Parallel sessions also addressed policy and global action perspectives. In addition, dedicated training sessions supported users in interacting with the platform, the data lake, or the Digital Twin Engine and making use of these capabilities. 

In addition to the main User eXchange programme, several workshops were held in advance and in parallel to the event. The Co-Design Workshop hosted by RMI brought together developers for hands-on exploration of how DestinE can be applied across different impact sectors. The “Engaging Users with the Energy Workshop”, organised by The Renewable Grid Initiative (RGI) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), discussed the initiatives energy research with several stakeholders. Similarly, the “Climate Adaptation meets Destination Earth Workshop” explored how DestinE can support Europe’s climate adaptation efforts and was organised by DG CNECT and DG CLIMA.  

The 5th User eXchange confirmed that the key elements of DestinE are now in place and increasingly accessible, supporting a new way of using, delivering and understanding Earth system information. 

The programme, slides and presentations can be explored on the event page. 
Watch recordings of the sessions on YouTube.

In pictures: