ESA Open Invitation to Tender: 1-11034
Open Date: 16/11/2021 10:57 CEST
Closing Date: 11/01/2022 13:00 CEST

Recently, the EC has proposed the Green Deal as the new growth strategy for Europe.Achieving this vision will require a quantum leap in our capacity to observe, understand and predict complex and inter-connected natural and anthropogenic processes occurring at different spatial and temporal scales, where complexinteractions and feedbacks among different components of the Earth system and human activities have reached a scale where abrupt global environmental change can no longer be excluded. Responding to this need, the new EU Data Strategy proposes to launch the „Destination Earth” initiative to „…bring together European scientific and industrial excellence to develop a very high precision digital model of the Earth.”ESA is proposing „Digital Twin Earth” activity in order to engage the community to bring together different expertise and emerging capabilities in ESA MSs to establish a solid scientific and technical basis to realise the Destination Earth vision and make a firm first step towards Digital Twin Earth. This activity is specifically focusing on the Alps region in the spirit of the dialogue and assessment based on the ‘Alpine Regional Initiative’ (eo4alps) an element of the Regional Initiative originated by ESA. In particular eo4alps conducted a workshop in Innsbruck in June 2018 and produced the eo4alps roadmap that identified thematic areas where satellite EO can contribute. With this activity ESA aims in particular at: Bringing together scientists, industry, modellers and policy makers to jointly define, prototype and propose a potential realisation of Digital Twin Earth focusing on the Alps; Building upon existing capabilities and emerging developments in MSs as building blocks to prototype and demonstrate the potential of Digital Twin Earth on specific „instances” or use cases focus on specific user needs and Green Deal priorities concerning the Alps; Engaging the users community, citizens and policy makers to ensure a user driven approach and assess need and gaps, scientific and technological limits and expected benefits impacts; Elaborating a community roadmap proposing both 1) a plan with realistic options for developing and implementing DTE in the Alps region and 2) an Scientific and Technical Agenda covering all the relevant RD Requirements: i.e., infrastructure, ITC and HPC, EO data needs, data integration, knowledge gaps in Earth system science, limits in current high resolution modellingcapabilities, potential use of AI, advanced visualization tools, etc. As a result of this ITT, ESA plans to start up to one contract.

Directorate: Directorate of EO Programmes
Estabilishment: ESRIN
ECOS Required: No
Classified: No
Price Range: 200-500 KEURO
Authorised Contact Person: Dora Tamas
Initiating Service: EOP-SDI
IP Measure: N/A
Prog. Reference: E/A105-01 – EarthScience Block 4
Tender Type: Open Competition
Open To Tenderers From: AT+BE+CA+CH+CZ+DE+DK+EE+EL+ES+FI+FR+GB+HU+IE+IT+LT+LU+LV+NL+NO+PL+PT+RO+SE+SI
Technology Keywords: 26-OTHERS
Products Keywords: 2-P-Other