Looking to the future: ESA is working on a digital twin of our earth

The corona pandemic has once again proven that humans can only look to the future to a very limited extent. Because scientists had for a long time generally warned against such a danger. However, they could not say when, where and how the crisis would occur. When the coronavirus actually spread from China all over the world, many states were insufficiently prepared. The European

space agency ESA, of all people, now wants to help ensure that a somewhat more detailed look into the future may soon be possible. Because in the meantime the Europeans operate a whole series of satellites that collect a lot of data and send it to the earth. The European satellite earth observation program Copernicus is particularly relevant in this context.

The consequences of climate change are becoming even more visible.

ESA scientists now want to combine the data obtained there with those from measuring stations on earth. Together with a few mathematical models in the background, a digital twin of the earth is to be created. The big advantage: Various factors can be added or omitted there as a test. With the help of artificial intelligence, it is possible to see what effects certain developments could have in the future. This could be used, for example, to better prepare the world for the concrete consequences of climate change. In this way, it could be seen how the loss of forest areas affects certain regions. But the digital twin could also help in many other areas to better understand new approaches and developments and their effects.

Artificial intelligence learns to recognize clouds As always with such models, the following also applies here:

The result is only as good as the data you put in at the beginning. That is why ESA wants to continue upgrading in this area. A small satellite called Phi-sat-1 has recently been in space. This observes the earth and was equipped for the first time with an AI chip. Since then, artificial intelligence has been learning to recognize clouds in images taken from space. This is intended to speed up the evaluation. In addition, this frees up capacities for human employees that they can use more effectively. In the future, artificial intelligence is likely to gain further importance in the generation and analysis of data. In order to be able to process even larger amounts of data at some point, ESA is also working on the subject of quantum computers and is already pursuing initial research projects here.