- Around 100 million Europeans do not have permanent access to drinking water due to drought, which has led to social changes, such as the reduction of inhabited areas and health problems.
- The key to tackling climate change is a free and open access to petabytes of data, including those from the European Earth observation Copernicus programme, that can be processed in a cloud computing environment.
- Every day experts around the world analyse huge amounts of Earth observation data using advanced IT tools supporting the development of Europe’s digital competences.
Higher temperature – greater technological challenge
Today’s realistic scenario predicts the global temperature rise of around 2.4 degrees C by 2100 (optimistically by 1.5 degrees, pessimistically by 3.5 degrees). Such an increase would bring devastating consequences. According to the UN, more than 2 billion people, including 100 million Europeans, do not have access to drinking water. As the world’s population is growing, so is the demand for water. By 2050, more than half of the Earth’s population could suffer from drinking water shortages, leading to societal changes, including climate refugees. In 2022, 330,000 illegal EU border crossings were recorded – the highest figure since 2016 (European Commission data). According to the European Environment Agency, in a pessimistic scenario, heatwaves of similar or even stronger severity than those in 2003 (when up to 70,000 people died in Europe due to high temperatures) will become regular occurrences. Floods will be equally dangerous. Only between 2008 and 2019, around 700,000 people in Europe changed their place of residence due to flood threats.
EU strategy and the role of technology
Earth observation satellite data confirms that the world we know is ceasing to exist. It is also increasingly evident that technology and digital competencies are indispensable to analyse and combat climate change. One of the key initiatives in this area is the EU’s Destination Earth, which involves the development of digital models of our planet based on satellite data, among other things. It will enable advanced research and analysis of ecosystems using the combination of different types of data, artificial intelligence and machine learning. EO data applications will be key to monitor and manage many areas, from urban planning to health care to agriculture.
The Destination Earth system will be based on three components: Core Platform, Data Lake, and Digital Twins. The first is the Core Platform, a portal managed by the European Space Agency that will provide access to services, tools, and applications offered by DestineE.
The second pillar is Data Lake, a huge data repository based on cloud services delivered and operated by the European cloud provider, CloudFerro who implements the project on behalf of EUMETSAT (European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites).
The third component provided by ECMWF (the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) is Digital Twins – digital replicas of the Earth that will enable carrying out simulations and analyses of climate changes (and more!) taking place on our planet.
CloudFerro’s role in this project is to provide geographically distributed private cloud infrastructure for the Data Lake component. The Data Lake repository built and operated by the Polish CloudFerro is designed to store over several dozen PB of data located on data centres throughout Europe. Individual elements of the system are located as close as possible to the supercomputers built under the EuroHPC programme. HPC will process the models created within the Digital Twin component, and the results of the analyses will be stored in the Data Lake repository. Data centres are located in in Warsaw (Poland), Kajaani (Finland), Bologna (Italy), Darmstadt (Germany), and Barcelona (Spain).
Copernicus, the first step
Open access and the ability to process and analyse Earth observation data are possible thanks to the establishment of the European Earth Observation Copernicus Programme in 2014, a key element of the European Union’s space programme. The European Space Agency, on behalf of the European Commission, has launched and maintains the Sentinel satellite constellation, carrying out optical, radar, meteorological and spectrographic observations. These data are now available through the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem, carried out on behalf of the European Commission by a consortium of European entities – T-Systems, CloudFerro, Sinergise, VITO, DLR, ACRI-ST and RHEA.
“The Copernicus programme gives vital support to international and national organizations, public administrations, and developers of applications, providing them with reliable, historical, and up-to-date data that is crucial to making well-informed decisions in various areas, including climate protection and security. As the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem operator, we are proud to play a key role in the Copernicus programme. The system is built on our cloud infrastructure and provides free and instant access to a full data archive, with searchable and downloadable data, and a range of data processing tools. At the moment, the repository has more than 70PB of data, and more than 26TB are added daily,” says Michal Bylicki, Sales Director at CloudFerro.
Action that delivers results here and now
Substantial technological base, both in terms of computing power and data storage resources, is indispensable for in-depth analyses of large areas or long time periods, where huge volumes of archive data need to be processed.
An example of the effective use of technological competence for environmental and climate protection is Hydro-SAR. It is a Wetland Water Monitoring (WWM) prototype service based on optical and SAR imagery and InSAR techniques, developed by TERRASIGNA, under a contract with the European Space Agency. Access to satellite data and cloud resources for data processing is provided by the CREODIAS platform operated by CloudFerro. The Danube Delta research project develops operational methods for mapping surface water extent, determines relative and absolute water level changes, and elaborates a model for water dynamics. Another example of using Earth Observation data and CREODIAS cloud resources is OVL-OceanDataLab service that provides access to data for ocean monitoring.
Rising water levels already threaten 110 million people worldwide, and it is predicted that by the end of the century, sea levels will have risen to such extent that at least another 80 million people will have to change their place of residence. Initiatives such as Destination Earth and accompanying projects supported by advanced technology should accelerate the transformation towards protecting Earth’s water areas as well as all other ecosystems to prevent these worst-case scenarios for our planet.
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