Capgemini takes a stance against climate change by developing tools to better understand our planet

The Earth is out of balance

According to NASA, 2019 was the second hottest year on Earth after 2016, while the last five years (2014–2019) constituted the hottest period for nearly 140 years.[1] Global warming causes increasingly frequent, extreme weather events, wreaking environmental havoc that seriously jeopardizes biodiversity, agriculture, food security, public health, and political stability.[2]

To fight global warming, the European Commission, in line with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, leads the transition towards a Climate Neutral economy  with the aim of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. At the global level, the United Nations issued a call for action to mobilize citizens around 17 Sustainable Development Goals (the thirteenth of which concerns the fight against climate change[3]) and to immediately launch several major scientific research programs.

The conditions are now in place to better monitor the Earth and improve our understanding of phenomena linked to climate variability. The exponential growth in the volume of data coming from a variety of sources, including Earth observation satellites, together with the maturity of cloud and AI technologies, make it possible to reinvent the way we use data.

Capgemini is at the heart of collecting, processing and enhancing data for the benefit of the major scientific Earth observation programs run by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Community, and France’s National Center for Space Studies (CNES).

Understanding how the climate works on a planetary scale

We create mission or ground control centers when Earth observation satellites are sent into space. We are working, for example, on a project that measures changes in carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere, particularly in areas that are impossible to monitor from the ground but liable to release CO2 in the near future, significantly intensifying climate change.

We are working closely with ESA and NASA to set up a collaborative platform that allows the scientific community to access data provided by similar NASA-NISAR, NNASA-GEDI,[4] and ESA-BIOMASS forest observation and surveillance missions. Our expertise also allowed us to get involved in the Chinese French Oceanography Satellite (CFOSAT) mission, whose aim is to monitor the oceans on a global scale to better anticipate the formation of storms and hurricanes.

Our experience on the ground, together with our understanding of data (particularly of data coming from space), allows us to deliver a rich digital environment dedicated to the climate. This secure platform combines cloud and AI technologies so that the entire European ecosystem (scientists, citizens, industry representatives, as well as public and private authorities) can generate, access, and explore viable and immediately applicable information from ESA satellites. The platform facilitates near-real-time decision making based on intelligent indicators of air quality, the spread of deforestation or urbanization, or the state of the oceans and crops. There are multiple applications – from predicting clean energy production based on climate variability, to analyzing rice crops, or even monitoring natural disasters, such as fires or floods.

Spurred by European research and committed to responding to the major challenges of our time, Capgemini is at the heart of the co-development of innovative tools to serve the planet.

Sources:

[1]  https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-noaa-analyses-reveal-2019-second-warmest-year-on-record

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/environment/efe/news/leading-way-climate-neutral-eu-2050-2019-08-26_en

[3] https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/

[4] Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation