The specialised geospatial data engineering provider Development Seed has been selected in the call opened by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) to develop a climate and weather chatbot in the framework of the Destination Earth (DestinE) initiative of the EU Commission.
In close coordination with ECMWF, the team will create a prototype chatbot based on cutting-edge language models (LLM), among other technologies. This AI based tool will support making the complex information and high-resolution climate and weather data generated by DestinE more accessible.
The DestinE climate and weather chatbot is part of a broader effort led by the European Commission’s DG CNECT to boost machine learning and artificial intelligence in DestinE Phase II (June 2024 – June 2026) that also includes the development of data-driven Earth-system modelling components for ocean, sea-ice, land, waves and hydrology; ethical ML/AI strategies; and a climate emulator.
Development Seed will leverage the latest advances in the fast-evolving LLM infrastructure and technology environment to ensure the climate and weather chatbot developed in DestinE includes state-of-the-art features in terms of usability and performance.
Using open models where appropriate and relying on an open-source software stack, Development Seed will ensure that users can understand and trust the chatbot results, by transparently communicating how the results are generated. A key focus is the chatbot’s performance, aiming for a short response time and for generating concise and relevant feedback to users’ requests. Special attention is given to avoiding the so-called AI ‘hallucinations’, namely when the chatbot dreams up incorrect answers.
The chatbot will continuously learn and improve, also thanks to the user’s feedback. All the chatbot operations will adhere to the FAIR Principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) that guide the Destination Earth system outputs and those of the European Centre for Medium-Range Forecasts. The development has already started, with a prototype chatbot being expected in early 2026.
Development Seed is a geospatial AI data management and cloud computing specialist provider based in Portugal with a strong commitment to produce tools relevant to the challenges of our changing planet. They have developed innovative platforms, foundation models and geospatial data interfaces for clients such as NASA, World Bank as well as DestinE’s Global Fish Tracking System, a use case contracted by the European Space Agency (ESA) in the framework of Destination Earth. The group has also created tools to enable the use of cloud-native geospatial technology like the fanzine “Optimizing Geospatial Data for the Cloud: A Zine Exploring Common Formats” or the innovative Lonboard Python library that handles large geospatial vector data.
More information on Development Seed’s blog.
Destination Earth is a European Union funded initiative launched in 2022, with the aim to build a digital replica of the Earth system by 2030. The initiative is being jointly implemented by three entrusted entities: the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) responsible for the creation of the first two ‘digital twins’ and the ‘Digital Twin Engine’, the European Space Agency (ESA) responsible for building the ‘Core Service Platform’, and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), responsible for the creation of the ‘Data Lake’.
We acknowledge the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking for awarding this project strategic access to the EuroHPC supercomputers LUMI, hosted by CSC (Finland) and the LUMI consortium, Marenostrum5, hosted by BSC (Spain) Leonardo, hosted by Cineca (Italy) and MeluXina, hosted by LuxProvide (Luxembourg) through a EuroHPC Special Access call.
More information about Destination Earth is on the Destination Earth website and the EU Commission website.
For more information about ECMWF’s role visit ecmwf.int/DestinE
For any questions related to the role of ECMWF in Destination Earth, please use the following email links: