Destination Earth’s Barcelona Data Bridge launched
On 13 June 2025, the Barcelona Data BridgeA Data Bridge is part of the DestinE Data Lake and provides More, hosted in the Adam Data Center, joined the distributed infrastructure of the Destination Earth Data Lake, creating further connections to its data services.
Launched in 2022 by the European Commission, Destination Earth (DestinE) set out to create a reproduction of our planet, based on forefront science and supercomputing capabilities. Its goal is to simulate and predict the interaction between natural phenomena and human activities.
The implementation of DestinE is entrusted to EUMETSAT, ESA and ECMWF, with EUMETSAT responsible for the Data Lake. The system draws on Europe’s High-performance computers’ (EuroHPC) unique observation and simulation capabilities.
The Data Lake stores data produced by DestinE’s Digital Twins and provides access to volumes of information from the three entrusted entities. It also offers Big Data processing services, enabling the generation of impactful Earth-system insight.
A data bridge is a crucial element of the Data Lake architecture that connects multiple data sources and processing services. Data bridges make it possible for users to access datasets regardless of the data location, thereby supporting the process of creating services and new applications.
The Barcelona Data BridgeA Data Bridge is part of the DestinE Data Lake and provides More has direct connectivity with the Marenostrum HPC, operated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC) to host the outputs of Destination Earth Digital Twins models.
The Barcelona Data BridgeA Data Bridge is part of the DestinE Data Lake and provides More provides access to DestinE Data Lake services encompassing powerful computing resources, including 13PB of storage, 8400 cores, 80TB of RAM and 12 GPU nodes, along with access to more than 200 datasets (DestinE and federated data).
At the launch event for the data bridge, Lothar Wolf, EUMETSAT’s Destination Earth Programme Manager, stated: “This is a further building block in EUMETSAT’s contribution to DestinE. Our development of the Data Lake component is providing a vital data layer for access to digital twin outputs and federated data. The proximity of the data bridges to supercomputers of the EUROHPC-JU like the MareNostrum 5 ensures optimum performance of near-data processing workflows for users across Europe.”
Data bridges within Destination Earth’s Data Lake architecture, operated by EUMETSAT
Group Picture in Barcelona. Pictured in front of the new data bridge, from left to right: Daniel Draghicescu (EC DG-CONNECT), Lothar Wolf (EUMETSAT), Charalampos Tsitlakidis (EC DG-CONNECT), Grazyna Piesiewicz (EC DG-CONNECT), Borys Saulyak (EUMETSAT)
Copyright: EUMETSAT