EUMETSAT’s Data Lake – key element of DestinE has been kicked off

29 March 2023

Warsaw, Poland, 29th of March 2023

Data Lake, a massive repository of data managed by EUMETSAT, will provide the foundation for “Destination Earth” – a European Union’s flagship initiative of digital Earth modelling contributing to the European digital and green transformation. CloudFerro, the prime contractor for the project, has announced that the first phase of works has already started, and is planned to be completed by June 2023. The company will provide and operate a complex cloud infrastructure distributed in several locations in Europe.

Rapid climate change is imposing an increasing burden on the European health, society and economy. To combat the environmental challenges, the European Commission, together with partnering organisations – EUMETSAT, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, ESA, the European Space Agency, agency, and ECMWF, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, has launched a ground-breaking initiative – Destination Earth (DestinE). Its long-term goal is to develop a digital replica of the Earth that will enable to model all the Earth’s ecosystems 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 key elements of DestinE will include:

Core Service Platform operated by ESA
DestinE Data Lake managed bps EUMETSAT
Digital Twins managed by ECMWF

Within the initiative, EUMETSAT is responsible for developing a multi-cloud Data Lake including design, establishment, testing, operations and provision of an online inventory of massive amounts of data that are the core foundation of Destination Earth (DestinE). The data will come from EUMETSAT’s own Earth observation satellite systems, ESA missions, Copernicus Sentinel satellites, ECMWF and other relevant European data providers.

"We are proud to be one of the trusted entities that will implement this important European initiative. Destination Earth will provide users with near-real-time data and insights into weather and climate, as well as seamless access to a multi cloud Data Lake infrastructure. CloudFerro was chosen as the industrial prime to build this infrastructure".

- says Lothar Wolf, Destination Earth Programme Manager at EUMETSAT

As a prime contractor for EUMETSAT, CloudFerro is responsible for coordinating the Data Lake project, the delivery of cloud infrastructure (Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service), Big Data processing, and service operations and maintenance. The company will collaborate with two European partners – CS Group responsible for the area of discovery and data access, and EODC in charge of Big Data processing.

The Data Lake environment that CloudFerro is developing and will operate, will include approx. 55 PB of data stored within private clouds located in data centres across Europe. These data centres are also locations of powerful computing facilities of EuroHPC project that can take part in digital modelling. Data Lake will provide seamless access to all DestinE user required data. The repository 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 general, the Data Lake service is expected to establish a scalable service framework that enables federation with different data spaces, as well as the provision of computing and storage services close to DestinE's data.

"We are very proud that EUMETSAT has chosen CloudFerro as the prime contractor to provide services for such an ambitious European initiative. We will contribute our technology, resources and know-how gained at many previous projects delivered for EUMETSAT and other leading European and national institutions, such as ESA, ECMWF or German Aerospace Agency DLR. Next to Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem, this is another large-scale European initiative that we are collaborating on, which demonstrates our capabilities to provide high quality scalable services of specialized cloud-based platforms".

– says Maciej Krzyżanowski, the CEO of CloudFerro.

DestinE is part of the European Commission’s Digital Europe programme. It is also supported by Horizon Europe and other relevant European and national initiatives in the area of research and innovation. The Commission plans to deliver the first DestinE services by 2024, initially to be used by the public sector. A fully implemented system will be completed within 7-10 years 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 will include one of the largest public EO data repositories in the world.