ESA selects Atos to expand capabilities of Destination Earth services platform
September 30, 2024
The European Space Agency (ESA) has selected cybersecurity and digital transformation company Atos to expand the capabilities of the European Commission’s Destination Earth (DestinE) initiative.
The initial 12-month consortium, led by Atos, will seek to design and implement advanced applications and services to the DestinE platform (first launched in 2022). Powered by ESA’s space observation data and Europe’s meteorological organisations, DestinE uses digital twins of planet Earth and an ESA-engineered services platform to inform strategies for adapting to climate change.
As a result of the proposed upgrades, “European Union member states, European institutions, manufacturers, academics and scientists will be able to devise strategies for adapting to climate change and implement accurate, actionable measures that ensure mitigation,” explained Atos.
Together with its partners Mews and ACRI-ST, Atos will support ESA to “pinpoint and deploy pioneering technologies in generative AI, data fusion and 3D visualisation,” all of which will be integrated into the DestinE services platform. The initiative will be led by Atos’ Toulouse-based teams, who will also work to add additional digital twins between now and 2030, “culminating in DestinE’s development as a full digital replica of the Earth”.
“The platform’s components will accelerate the development of multiple use cases spotlighting the impact of natural phenomena and human activities on Earth while planning for extreme weather events, adapting policy to climate challenges and raising public awareness,” concluded Atos – which added that full knowledge and understanding of its cloud-based platforms will be key to integrating DestinE’s “flexible and secure open-source computing infrastructure”.
