On June10th, the European Union’s Destination Earth system was launched aimed to model and monitor our planet, and simulate natural phenomena with unprecedented accuracy.
CloudFerro, a Polish cloud services provider, delivers the core element of the system – Data Lake – a massive repository of data that is the foundation for Destination Earth, managed by EUMETSAT.
The multi-cloud Data Lake service is expected to establish a scalable service framework for federating different data spaces, providing cloud computing and storage services close to Destination Earth data.
Destination Earth (DestinE) is a flagship initiative of the European Commission, together with partnering organizations – EUMETSAT (the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites), ESA (European Space Agency), and ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). Its long-term goal is to develop a digital replica of the Earth that will enable to model the whole Earth system in a highly accurate manner helping monitor natural and human activities, predict weather and climate phenomena, as well as test scenarios for more sustainable developments. The system was launched on June 10th at Grand Opening event in Kajaani, Finland.
DestinE system includes three key elements: Core Service Platform operated by ESA, Digital Twins managed by ECMWF, and DestinE Data Lake managed by EUMETSAT. The latter is a multi-cloud inventory of massive amounts of data that is the core foundation of the Destination Earth system.
The online repository is designed to provide seamless access to all data specified in Destination Earth data portfolio, and will be available from a large number of external data spaces, Digital Twins or applications residing on the DestinE Core Service Platform, regardless of data type and location. In addition to the data coming from the Digital Twins, data stored in the Data Lake will include EUMETSAT’s own Earth Observation satellite systems, ESA missions, Copernicus Sentinel satellites, ECMWF, and other relevant European data providers.
The Data Lake environment that CloudFerro is developing and operating is designed to store more than several dozen PB of data. It will be stored within private clouds located in data centers across Europe: Warsaw, Poland – central site, Kajaani, Finland, Bologna, Italy, Barcelona, Spain, and Darmstadt, Germany. These data centers are also locations of powerful computing facilities built under the EuroHPC program that take part in digital modelling providing large computing power indispensable for this type of processing. The HPC supercomputers will process the models created within the Digital Twin component, and the results of the analyses will be stored in the Data Lake repository.
As a prime contractor for EUMETSAT, CloudFerro is responsible for coordinating the Data Lake project and delivering cloud infrastructure (built as Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service) that includes more than 60 Petabytes of storage, and more than 23,500 central processing units (CPUs) installed. The company is also providing big data processing services, including distributed computing and workflows, as well as service operations and maintenance.
CloudFerro collaborates with two European partners – CS Group responsible for the area of discovery and data access, and EODC, who are in charge of big data processing. Harmonized data access (HDA) will be used to simplify data discovery and access to two Digital Twins managed by ECMWF (Extreme Weather and Climate Change Adaptation), external federated data spaces allowing to leverage many public data sources supported by the EU, and user generated data.
The Destination Earth initiative is part of the European Commission’s Digital Europe program. It is also supported by Horizon Europe and other relevant European and national initiatives in the area of research and innovation. The first DestinE services will be used by the public sector, and a fully implemented system will be completed within by 2033 to also serve scientists, researchers, private sector, and the general public.
► CloudFerro provides the services of public, private and hybrid cloud computing and big data storage optimized for the processing of geo-located information to many renowned organisations. The company has been trusted by leading European firms and scientific institutions, including the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites EUMETSAT, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Mercator Ocean International, German Aerospace Centre (DLR), the EGI, to name a few. CloudFerro contributes its unique know-how gained from many years’ experience as a developer and operator of Earth observation data platforms such as CREODIAS, CODE-DE, EO-Lab and WEkEO. The company also plays a key role in building and operating Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem – a recently launched initiative of the European Commission, which includes one of the largest public EO data repositories in the world.