ExtremeEarth-PP is a preparatory project for ExtremeEarth, a proposed FET Flagship Programme FETFLAG-01-2018 of the European Commission. It addresses the specific need, articulated in the Call for Preparatory Actions, for “New technologies and approaches for high-precision modelling and simulation, including the necessary data integration, that enable an indepth understanding of the earth, natural hazards and climate change.”

Environmental extremes are responsible for thousands of casualties and billions of € in damages in Europe annually. Societal risks associated with many of these extremes are poorly understood in today’s climate – even more so as climate changes. Knowledge gaps arise from the inadequacy of existing models, which are unable to capture key physical processes and hence cannot fully incorporate an expanding palette of observations. ExtremeEarth will deliver the methods needed to achieve a step change in simulation accuracy and data integration, to allow scientists to understand the drivers of extremes and application communities to anticipate their impact.

ExtremeEarth will develop the technologies for a required thousand-fold increase in computation, and fundamentally redesign workflows to dynamically expose the full information content of a new generation of models and data to users. These developments will exploit the complementarity of ExtremeEarth’s domain sciences, be realised through co-design by scientists, application communities and technologists, and become an engine for European innovation across a broad range of sectors. 

The ExtremeEarth-PP will prepare the ExtremeEarth project proposal, by identifying partners and stakeholders, specifying an operating and governance model, developing a project roadmap and work plan. In addition it will build support from EU member states and other agencies, contribute to EC policies and support efforts for the Flagship Programme also through an appropriate dissemination and communication strategy.

The text of the proposal can be downloaded here.