General conditions

1. Admissibility conditions: described in Annex A and Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes

Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System

2. Eligible countries: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes

A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.

3. Other eligibility conditions: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes

4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes

5. Evaluation and award:

• Award criteria, scoring and thresholds are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes

• Submission and evaluation processes are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual

• Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement: described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes

6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants: described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes

Beneficiaries will be subject to the following additional access rights: Each beneficiary must grant royalty-free access to its results (intellectual property rights), which are needed for further developing, implementing and monitoring the European Commission’s Destination Earth initiative, to the entities that are signatories of the Contribution Agreements for implementing the initiative (European Space Agency (ESA), European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT)). Such access rights are limited to non-commercial and non-competitive use.

Eligible costs will take the form of a lump sum as defined in the Decision of 7 July 2021 authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027) – and in actions under the Research and Training Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (2021-2025). [[This decision is available on the Funding and Tenders Portal, in the reference documents section for Horizon Europe, under ‘Simplified costs decisions’ or through this link: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/guidance/ls-decision_he_en.pdf]].

Specific conditions

7. Specific conditions: described in the [specific topic of the Work Programme]

Documents

Call documents:

Standard application form — call-specific application form is available in the Submission System

Standard application form (HE RIA, IA)

Standard evaluation form — will be used with the necessary adaptations

Standard evaluation form (HE RIA, IA)

MGA

Lump Sum MGA v1.0

RAO decision authorising the use of lump sum funding

Explanatory slides for applicants on the specificities of lump sum funding

Detailed Budget Table (HE LS) for estimation of Lump Sum Funding

Additional documents:

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 1. General Introduction

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 3. Research Infrastructures

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 13. General Annexes

HE Programme Guide

HE Framework Programme and Rules for Participation Regulation 2021/695

HE Specific Programme Decision 2021/764

EU Financial Regulation

Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment

EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement

Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual

Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions

Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement

Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

• Emergence of new science-based digital twin infrastructures to be gradually integrated in Destination Earth[1];
• Establishment of new digital standards for software (including simulation and simulation-observation data fusion) and data for Destination Earth;
• Standards- and science-based approach for modelling, predicting and assessing the Earth systems and their socio-economic impact.

Destination Earth, for which the operational capacity building is funded from the Digital Europe Programme, aims to develop a high precision digital model of the Earth to model, monitor and simulate natural phenomena and related human activities. As part of European Commission’s Green Deal and the Digital Strategy, Destination Earth (DestinE) will contribute to achieving the objectives of the twin transition, green and digital.

As part of the build-up of Destination Earth, continuous preparatory scientific and technical developments need to be carried out to ensure integration of new digital twins, covering new areas, into the Destination Earth digital twin framework.

The aim is to develop new digital twin infrastructures that the core simulation, data fusion and supporting software infrastructures for high-performance computing and data handling can be seamlessly integrated with the Destination Earth platform components. These infrastructures should optimally support the scientific and technical performance of the entire digital twin ecosystem of Destination Earth.

The intended integration can be performed at different levels, for example: (i) directly integrated in the existing Destination Earth simulation and data fusion system (i.e. full integration mode), (ii) integrated in a sequential workflow where new digital twins operate their own simulation and data fusion tasks interfacing with the existing Destination Earth digital twins (i.e. coupling mode) or (iii) as data post-processing applications without own Earth-system component simulation tasks (i.e. post-processing mode).

Proposals should address all the following aspects:

• development of additional and/or improved, advanced, very high-resolution, complex Earth-system model components representing, for example, atmosphere, ocean, land surface, hydrology, cryosphere and biosphere in the Earth-system simulation framework of Destination Earth;
• collecting advanced Earth observation data from satellites, established airborne and ground-based observatories as well as novel technologies (for example drones, buoys, IoT sensors) linked for use in the data fusion framework of Destination Earth for simulation and observation;
• ensure appropriate representation of uncertainty to produce reliable estimates of both monitored and predicted states of the new components;
• development of scientific components of impact models associated with the new topical components for the management of user specific applications in areas such as renewable energy, food, water and health;
• development of software and data handling infrastructures that use and enhance the extreme-scale computing and data handling infrastructure of the Digital Twin Engine of Destination Earth; support and enhance both the workflow management established by the existing Digital Twin Engine and its operation through the DestinE Core Service Platform and the data handling established by the existing Digital Twin Engine and its operation through the DestinE Data Lake.

Proposals should take advantage of the opportunities and developments offered by existing Horizon Europe research and innovation actions (RIA) developing new simulation and observation capabilities, emerging ICT infrastructures (e.g., EuroHPC), research infrastructures and related projects, and HPC[2] Centers of Competence and Excellence (such as ESiWACE for weather and climate prediction and ChEESE for solid Earth applications) and the work towards the European Digital Twin of the Ocean[3]. Where the implementing entities of Destination Earth (European Space Agency (ESA), European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT)) and other key organisations in the field (e.g. Mercator Ocean) are not members of the consortium, the proposals should demonstrate how they intend to collaborate with or involve them. In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 6 or higher by the end of the project – see General Annex B.

[1]https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/destination-earth

[2]High Performance Computing

[3] https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe/eu-missions-horizon-europe/healthy-oceans-seas-coastal-and-inland-waters/european-digital-twin-ocean-european-dto_en