EVE: an open source digital assistant based on AI
Earth Virtual Expert
Making scientific know-how on Earth observation accessible to everyone
The Challenge
Querying Earth observation data
The European Space Agency (ESA) represents Europe’s gateway to space. ESA Φ-lab accelerates the future of Earth Observation through a revolutionary and transformative approach to innovation.
The challenge was to accompany this transformation by developing an advanced conversational interface, in collaboration with Pi School, in just 8 weeks.
The need brought to light
Disseminating knowledge for the benefit of the community
ESA holds one of the most precious resources of our time: data. But how can we make it truly accessible, usable, and useful for everyone – scientists, policymakers, educators, citizens?
The intelligent interface was created to be made available to the community, whoever they may be, democratizing knowledge at a global level.
The solution
A digital assistant for conversing fluently and intelligently with ESA data
The virtual assistant is designed to answer complex questions about the environment and sustainability in natural language. It is a large-scale model with expertise in Earth Observation and Earth Sciences, resulting from the integration of LLM, RAG, and MCP, accessible through a web app.
Within it, users can:
- enrich the knowledge base with documents uploaded to their personal space (“My Collection”);
- adjust technical parameters such as “temperature,” meaning the tone of voice and creativity of the response;
- collect information, thanks to the conversation history organized by threads.
Transforming our understanding of our planet
The project aims to provide the community with an empowerment tool that generates added value. A bridge between scientific information and those who want to understand, use and share it.
Do you have a similar challenge?
“This project is designed for the global community, with the ambition to serve thousands of users, European and worldwide. […] I would like to thank Pi School, all the mentors and colleagues for their great contribution to the project, as well as Humans.tech for the beautiful interface.”
Nicolas Longépé
Earth Observation Data Scientist @ ESA Φ-lab and EVE Project Manager