The contours of a trillion-pixel Digital Twin Earth
Date:
I contributed to the invited keynote address by colleague Sveinung Loekken from the European Space Agency at the Earth Vision 2020 workshop organised at CVPR, taking place on 14 June 2020, in Seattle, Washington, USA, and virtually. The talk describes the challenges and draws perspectives on building digital twins of the Earth, annoucing the future European initiatives: EC’s Destination Earth and ESA’s Digital Twin Earth programmes. Slides are available.
Abstract: : A Digital Twin of the Earth (DTE) in Europe now is key to take a giant step towards a prognostic decision support capability in the context of policies for sustainable development. A trillion pixel DTE looks like a dynamic and interactive replica of the past, present, and future of our planet in the digital domain, based on effective integration of observations (satellite, in-situ, IoT, and socioeconomic data), Earth-system sciences and simulations, the bridge to impact sector science and simulations, and artificial intelligence methodologies. The DTE is a moon-shot that can stimulate advances in EO, science and technology, reinforce relevance by building the bridge to impactful socioeconomic sectors associated with the grand challenges of humanity.