At SCC, Charlotte Debus, research group leader of the Junior Research Group Robust and Efficient AI (RAI), and Markus Götz, head of the Helmholtz AI Consulting group for energy topics, are launching the project WOW - "World model of Our World" - together with researchers from KIT institutes for Earth System Science, Climate Science, Computer Science and Robotics (ITI, IWU, IPF, IAR, IMKASF, IMKTRO and IMKIFU (IMK)).
This is a unique AI-based "world model" that links global climate change with local environmental impacts such as forest fires, floods and droughts. WOW was awarded the prestigious Carl Zeiss Foundation Breakthroughs Grant worth six million euros.
Markus Götz will oversee the development of joint latent representations between AI models for atmospheric, hydrological and land surface extremes. These are low-dimensional data embeddings that capture common structures across different data modalities. They enable interaction across different spatial and temporal scales and help scientists to recognize how changes in one part of the Earth system affect other parts.
This innovative coupling promises faster, more accurate and more energy-efficient simulations than conventional physics-based models. This research is being evaluated under the leadership of Charlotte Debus, whose research focuses on scalable, efficient AI and uncertainty quantification in energy informatics. In the long term, the technology could provide high-resolution climate and environmental information to support climate risk assessment and adaptation planning.
In addition, Mishal Benz, Helmholtz AI Consultant at the SCC, is responsible for science management tasks in the WoW project, with a focus on science communication and public relations. This task includes developing strategies to make both the scientific progress and the milestones of the project transparent and to provide communication support in order to increase its impact and reach.
Further information in the KIT press release
Contact at the SCC: Dr. Charlotte Debus, Dr. Markus Götz