Digital twins and/or their major components for environment, climate and security

This call supports the development of digital twins — and their major building blocks — to model and anticipate complex challenges spanning environment, climate and security. Funded projects are expected to deliver high-fidelity, data-driven representations of real-world systems that help public authorities and operators test scenarios, predict impacts, and respond faster.

Program

Horizon Europe — Research Infrastructures (INFRA-2026)

Funding

~€7.5m per project, 2 projects expected

Focus areas

Digital twins are applied to disaster response, health emergencies, energy systems, migration, and food and water security. The emphasis is on integrating research infrastructure data into operational, decision-ready models.

Expected Outcome:

• Improved security and preparedness for the Union and more disaster resilient society facing the adverse effects of climate change;
• Improved capacity of key users and decision-makers to anticipate, mitigate and contain risks at the vulnerable societal sectors at the intersection of climate change, environment and security;
• Further development of the data lab infrastructure around Destination Earth in line with the AI continent Action Plan^[1]

Scope:

Climate change has both direct and indirect consequences to the security of our societies. To be able to address the intricate connections between climate change and security to various impact sectors, Europe needs to be equipped with adequate tools, technologies and methods that enable addressing these complex issues and exploit the recent advances in AI, high-performance computing and other new digital technologies.

Digital twins for civil security require the development of high-accuracy and fast-response models at local and regional levels to strengthen preparedness and resilience, protect EU citizens and raise risk awareness both inside and outside the EU. The topic focuses on new digital twins, or major new components of existing digital twins, to strengthen foresight and anticipation capabilities at the intersection of environment, climate and security. In addition to climate and environmental issues, possible security related impact sectors include, but are not limited to, natural or human-induced disasters, health and related emergencies, energy sustainability and management, migration, or resource scarcity (e.g. food and water). The proposed cross-disciplinary solutions should cover risk mitigation, prevention and foresight, and make use of the Destination Earth system capabilities. The focus is on local and/or regional models, primarily in Europe and its neighbourhood. If necessary, some indicators can also be provided at regional / global levels.

The work should benefit from rapid advances in modelling, observations and data fusions, artificial intelligence and machine learning, state-of-the art processing and visualisation capabilities, and enable workflows to support users in key impact sectors.

The proposals should cover the following aspects:

• Development of new digital twins, or major new components of existing digital twins, to strengthen foresight and anticipation capabilities at the intersection of environment, climate and security in short (operational), medium (tactical) and long-term (strategical) scenarios;
• Demonstrated usability through Minimum Viable Products (MVP) in at least three application areas linking to climate, environment and security, with the involvement of real users;
• Advancing the state-of-the-art in modelling, observations and data fusions, artificial intelligence and machine learning, processing, advanced visualisation capabilities and detection features, and workflows to support users in key impact sectors;
• High computational capacity to implement responsive visualization interfaces that allow advanced visualization capabilities (e.g. 3D, virtual reality, interactive simulations) for decision-makers;
• Coherent integration between satellite and other data (e.g. statistics, in situ, UAV Earth Observation data), and at least two sources in a modular architecture that guarantee the progressive injection of the additional data sources, including high quality observational and other data from the research infrastructures. In case of sensitive datasets, a coherent and comprehensive plan is needed, explaining how the data access will be granted to develop the proposed models and services and how these data will be progressively integrated;
• Clear pathway towards integration with the Destination Earth system, and further development of the data lab infrastructure around Destination Earth for new AI-enabled digital twins using the Data Labs of the AI Factories and integrating them in the DestinE system;
• Enable informed decision-making by non-technical experts and policy makers through assistance of (generative) AI models enabling user requirements analysis and narrowing down vast amounts of data and information into actionable and understandable scenarios;
• Clear pathway towards integration with the Destination Earth system regarding the infrastructure architecture, data and services, and identifying which capacities – depending on the scenario – can be directly used in Destination Earth, and which ones would need to be adapted to deal with sensitive issues;
• Demonstrated trustworthiness in the ethical use of AI;
• Robustness and accuracy of the models to be reliable for security usage.

The proposals should demonstrate clearly and with measurable indicators how they contribute to key Union priorities on adapting and preparing for a changing climate, crisis preparedness and disaster resilient society. They should leverage on the relevant parts of the EU’s AI Continent Action Plan.

The proposals should demonstrate a clear and credible pathway towards collaboration with the implementing entities of Destination Earth initiative (European Space Agency (ESA), European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT)).

Proposals will need to adhere to the standards and best practices set by the Destination Earth initiative of the European Commission to allow coupling with the existing Destination Earth system. The proposed work is expected to ensure synergies with major European digital twin developments related to security (in particular those of the European Union Satellite Centre(SatCen)), and other digital twin developments relevant to the chosen application fields. They should also leverage the knowledge and solutions generated in the relevant Horizon Europe projects, in particular those selected from HORIZON-INFRA-2021-TECH-01, HORIZON-INFRA-2024-TECH-01 and HORIZON-INFRA-2025-TECH-01). Synergies with the Common European Data Spaces and in particular with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) are also encouraged.

Proposals should also aim to address the possible use of the project outcomes in existing or new service offers by the Member States, Associated Countries or the European Union, like the relevant Copernicus services.

Who can apply

Multi-beneficiary consortia of at least three independent legal entities from three different EU Member States or Horizon Europe Associated Countries. See the topic page for full eligibility conditions.

How to apply

Submit your proposal through the EU Funding & Tenders Portal before the cut-off date. Consult the call documents and General Annexes for evaluation criteria and templates.