CFAs: Advancing Digital Twins for Climate, Environment and Security

About this grant

The European Commission is funding projects that develop advanced digital twin technologies to improve civil security, climate resilience, disaster preparedness, and risk-informed decision-making across Europe and neighbouring regions. With a total budget of €15 million, this …

What the funding covers

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How to apply

1. 1Step 1: Confirm legal eligibility by ensuring the organisation complies with Horizon Europe rules, including country participation status and entity eligibility conditions
2. 2Step 2: Build a strong multidisciplinary consortium including technical experts, domain specialists, end users, and representatives from climate, security, AI, Earth observation, and policy domains
3. 3Step 3: Define a clear climate-environment-security use case focused on practical, high-impact, and policy-relevant applications with operational relevance
4. 4Step 4: Design at least three demonstrable application areas (MVPs), each showing real-world relevance, usability, and user testing validation
5. 5Step 5: Plan the digital twin architecture including modelling logic, data flows, modular design, interoperability, scalability, and future dataset integration
6. 6Step 6: Develop a robust data integration plan combining satellite, statistical, in situ, and UAV data while addressing governance, security, and access control
7. 7Step 7: Demonstrate how AI and machine learning enhance outcomes with clearly defined decision-support functions and avoid generic or vague AI claims
8. 8Step 8: Ensure DestinE compatibility by providing a clear integration pathway with Destination Earth infrastructure, data labs, and AI-enabled ecosystems
9. 9Step 9: Prioritise usability for non-technical users through dashboards, simulations, or 3D interfaces that support decision-making and interpretation
10. 10Step 10: Address trustworthy AI and risk governance including validation, robustness, reliability, ethical safeguards, and mitigation of harmful or misleading outputs
11. 11Step 11: Prepare a strong implementation and impact plan covering deployment, testing, stakeholder adoption, and long-term resilience and preparedness benefits

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