Unveiling the DestinE Platform Use Cases Project (DEUC) Community: insights from the first DEUC community meeting

Destination Earth (DestinE) is continually advancing to develop a digital twin of our planet, an initiative spearheaded by the European Commission and driven by three key organisations: the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). 

Amidst the ongoing challenges of climate change, extreme events and human activity effects on Earth, the creation of this digital twin has become increasingly essential for informing stakeholder decision-making.

ESA’s procured DestinE Use Cases management Project project (DEUC), executed by a consortium led by STARION with the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Trust-IT Services, focuses, amongst other things, on the collection of user recommendations for the Destination Earth Platform. The Consortium has planned a variety of events for interacting with users, including Community Meetingsthe selection and implementation of a first set of Use Cases meant to demonstrate the ability of the Destination Earth Platform to provide actionable information and decision support to its end-users actively engaging the broad community of Destination Earth Platform users and stakeholders..

The first DEUC project’s Community Meeting was hosted online by the Laboratory of Geoinformatics of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on 26 March 2024 and since then, the first thematic Community of Practice (COP) meeting has been held (see: 1st Meeting of the CoP on Education) with others on the way. 

This event was a crucial opportunity to interact with the community, introduce the project’s goals and incorporate user feedback regarding the development of a functional community that will support the use and further development of the DestinE Platform. At the same time, it significantly benefits from the diverse insights and experiences contributed by the entire DestinE community.

This meeting offered a comprehensive overview of several areas:

• DEUC project’s strategic approach towards the community: We unveiled a plan to foster engagement, support, and collaboration, empowering every member to thrive.
• Core values and processes: We discovered the underlying principles that guide the DEUC project mission and community spirit, ensuring focused and purposeful collaboration.
• Communities of Practice: We learned about groups focused on specific areas of interest, where you can deepen collaboration, share knowledge, and sharpen your skills to drive the mission forward.
• Getting involved: We explored exciting ways you can contribute your unique perspective and actively participate in shaping the future of the DestinE Platform and community.

Participants were invited to share their ideas, needs, questions, and aspirations regarding the Destination Earth Platform’s potential and the effective functioning of the DEUC project community. The most frequently mentioned needs include:

• Providing detailed documentation, a FAQ section and user support. All of which is already in the making.
• Establishing clear pathways for user participation, facilitating networking, collaboration, and funding opportunities through the platform. This fits perfectly with the current plan of frequently engaging with the community with a variety of events (e.g. User eXchange workshops, webinars, challenges, etc).
• Emphasising free, diverse data sources and suggesting a reliable bibliography.
• Developing tools and compiling extensive data for modelling anthropogenic impacts and their combined effects.
• Organising webinars, training courses, summer schools, and conferences.
• Expanding the range of use case topics.
• Creating a GitHub profile with projects for participants to explore, develop, and contribute to both individually and in teams, thereby encouraging user involvement in project development by engaging teams in use case development and application creation.
• Setting up a forum for community discussions, enabling users to interact, learn from one another, and collaborate on projects and research.

See the event page for the Slido poll results and event presentation for more details.

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