HIGHWAY
HIGH performance earth observation digital twin components ready data gateWAY
A bridge between ESA Earth Observation data and the Digital Twin Earth within the DestinE framework
Context
The climate crisis is the defining challenge of our time: rising temperatures, more frequent extreme events and shifting ecosystems are already reshaping how we live, produce and plan. And its effects don't stay in one place: heatwaves are no longer just isolated weather events, but a source of recurring damage that ripples through agriculture, public health, energy demand and the global economy.
Understanding any one of these phenomena in isolation is no longer enough. Yet, the data needed to see the whole picture is growing exponentially in volume, variety and speed.
In 2022, the European Commission launched Destination Earth (DestinE), an initiative aimed at creating a Digital Twin of the Earth capable of:
- predicting extreme weather events
- analyzing climate adaptation scenarios
- assessing socioeconomic impacts
- testing mitigation policies and strategies.
In this context, Earth Observation (EO) data is fundamental, and services are needed to make them easily accessible and usable.
The project
HIGHWAY (HIGH performance earth observation digital twin components ready data gateWAY) is the ESA service that makes EO data accessible and ready to use to feed the Digital Twin Earth models into the DestinE platform.
The consortium combines complementary expertise in Earth Observation data processing, cloud services and infrastructure, quality assurance, and operational service delivery:
- adwäisEO, acts as prime overseeing the management of the service and contributes to the IT infrastructure, supports data processing workflows.
- ACRI-ST, contributes by providing the remaining portion of the IT infrastructure, performing quality assessments of the ARCO generated products, and ensuring end-to-end monitoring.
- EarthLab Luxembourg, responsible for on-demand data processing.
MEEO’s role
Within the HIGHWAY service, MEEO plays a strategic technological role through two main activities.
ARCO transformation of EO data
MEEO is responsible for the ARCO (Analysis Ready, Cloud Optimized) transformation of EO data. This process harmonizes datasets from ESA satellite programmes. The transformation follows the Earth Observation Processing Framework (EOPF), a standard model used to ensure consistency across datasets. Once processed, the data are made available in cloud-optimized formats, such as Zarr and Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG). These formats allow users to access and analyze large volumes of satellite data more quickly and efficiently.
Advanced Data Access service
MEEO also develops and maintains the Advanced Data Access (ADA) service, which allows users to easily find, view, and analyze EO data prepared in ARCO format. Through ADA, datasets can be searched using either OpenSearch and STAC (Spatio Temporal Asset Catalog), and explored as interactive maps through the Web Map Service (WMS).
These tools and services make it easier to integrate satellite data into scientific studies, applications, geospatial analyses.
- 100+
- ARCO transformation pipelines for heterogeneous datasets
Roadmap
HIGHWAY roadmap
- Completed: March 2024: Kickoff. The HIGHWAY service is launched at a kickoff meeting held at adwäisEO's premises and online, setting out objectives, roles and ways of working.
- Completed: February 2025: Operation start. The service begins operating, with the first data services going live.
- Completed: April 2025: DestinE onboarding. HIGHWAY is successfully onboarded onto the DestinE platform, becoming part of Europe's Digital Twin Earth ecosystem.
- Completed: June 2025: Full operation. The service reaches full operational status, with the Processing service added to the HIGHWAY offering.
- Completed: November 2025: New missions. Additional satellite missions are integrated, strengthening and expanding the overall offering.
Advanced Data Access roadmap
- Completed: December 2024: Initial batch. SMOS (ocean salinity, soil moisture, sea ice thickness), CryoSat (Cryo-TEMPO EOLIS) and Proba-V (top-of-canopy and vegetation index products at multiple resolutions).
- Completed: January 2025: Batch 1. SMOS wind speed products.
- Completed: February 2025: Batch 2. Further SMOS soil moisture and ocean salinity levels, plus Proba-V atmosphere and canopy products.
- Completed: April 2025: Batch 4. Aeolus wind data across its product levels.
- Completed: May 2025: Batch 5. A broad set of CryoSat-2 (Cryo-TEMPO) products spanning land ice, sea ice, polar oceans, coastal oceans and inland water, alongside numerous specialist products.
- Completed: June 2025: Batch 6. Additional CryoSat-2 products and the first Swarm plasma data.
- Completed: July 2025: Batch 7. EarthCARE products (clouds, aerosols, radiation), an extensive range of Swarm plasma, gravity and magnetic-field products, and further Proba-V data.
- Completed: August 2025: Batch 8. Additional Swarm products.
- Completed: September – October 2025: Batches 9 & 10. Targeted Proba-V vegetation product updates.
- Completed: November 2025: Batch 11. A wide set of EarthCARE products (clouds, aerosols and atmospheric properties) and further Proba-V data, completing the available datasets.