Mari Mar Alonso, Director of Climate Action at Ihobe participated on 10th June in the launch of 'Destination Earth', a European Commission initiative that seeks to develop a highly-accurate digital model of the Earth (a "digital twin") to model, monitor and simulate natural phenomena, hazards and human activities associated with climate change, thus helping to design accurate and feasible adaptation strategies and mitigation measures.

DestinE will support the resolution of complex environmental challenges to control and simulate the evolution of earth systems (land, sea, atmosphere, biosphere) and human interventions; anticipate environmental catastrophes and resulting socio-economic crises to save lives and avoid major economic downturns; and enable scenario development and testing for increasingly sustainable development.

The Basque Government's Environmental Company will be responsible for piloting the tool in the Basque Country in order to adapt to the effects of heat stress caused by climate change, developed by Tecnalia along with other technology centres in Europe.

During the presentation, Alonso assured that "having a high-resolution digital replica will be a significant advance that will enable us to anticipate and predict the effects of climate change in our territory". She also pointed out that the initiative is in line with one of Ihobe's fundamental objectives: "address the evaluation of the effectiveness of climate change adaptation measures on different territorial levels in an integrated and coordinated way. We seek to provide climate information for short, medium and long-term decision-making in areas such as territorial planning, health and social cohesion. For this reason, she believes that "the possibility offered by DestinE to simulate different scenarios will allow for a more effective deployment of the adaptation measures to combat heat stress, thus helping to secure a better future for the Basque population".

The launch day held in Finland was attended by the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, Margrethe Vestager, along with political representatives and members of the entities responsible for the implementation of 'Destination Earth': European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).