The Destination Earth (DestinE) initiative: how it will contribute to forecast and manage natural hazards
A digital twin is a digital replica of an object (of a system) that provides a way of visualizing, manipulating, and understanding its physical responses to external forcings by dynamically fusing data and models. With present computational capabilities and data volumes entering the Exascale Era, digital twins of the Earth system are able to mimic the different Earth system components (atmosphere, ocean, land, lithosphere) with unrivaled precision, providing analyses, forecasts, uncertainty quantification, and “what if” scenarios for natural and anthropogenic hazards from their genesis to their impacts. The Destination Earth (DestinE) initiative, under the umbrella of the Digital Europe Programme, is a decade-long (2022-2030) massive effort towards the integration and coupling of Earth system components in a single digital twin. During the first implementation phase of DestinE, two pioneering twins on climate change adaptation and weather-driven extremes are being implemented. In parallel, other initiatives are preparing complementary twins for its eventual integration in DestinE. In particular, the DT-GEO project (2022-2025, Grant Agreement No 101058129) is developing a digital twin prototype on geophysical extremes from volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, and anthropogenically-induced seismicity. A number of twin components (workflows) will allow conducting precise data-informed early warning systems, high-resolution model forecasts on the EuroHPC supercomuting systems, and hazard assessments across multiple time scales. The fusion of Earth system observations from a myriad of sources with cutting-edge modeling with AI approaches, will contribute to evidence-based policy development, user-specific and actionable predictions based on downstream services, and a transversal scientific collaboration across different scientific domains.
Biography:
Arnau Folch is a research Professor at Geociencias Barcelona (GEO3BCN-CSIC). Author of 100+ scientific publications, he has participated in 40+ national and European competitive research projects and in multiple contracts with private companies. Coordinator of the EuroHPC Center of Excellence for Exascale in Solid Earth (ChEESE) and of the DT-GEO project. Member of the Strategic Advisory Board of the Destination Earth initiative. For overa a decade, he acted as liaison officer of the International Union of Geophysics and Geodesy (IUGG) at the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and leaded the Commission on tephra Hazard Modelling of the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI). He has a wide expertise in ash dispersal forecasting and is one of the developers of the numerical model for ash transport FALL3D, widely used worldwide. Having access to some of the most powerful supercomputing facilities in Europe he has also developed a wide expertise in optimised computing strategies.