The Digital Twin Ocean is the first digital component developed to propose a Mission knowledge system supporting the objectives of the Mission “protect our oceans and waters” and supporting the implementation of Mission lighthouses.

The Digital Twin ocean will host a digital infrastructure with data services to facilitate data analytics, advanced modelling and high performance computing, development of what if scenarios to assess policies development in a context of resilience to climate change and sustainable development, supporting as well the implementation of local twins addressing specifics requested by stakeholders at all relevant scales from global to local.

The DTO architecture is meant to become scalable and flexible to offer the opportunity to develop an integrative approach to all-waters management from inland waters to oceans and vice versa, considering the whole as the hydrosphere.

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

• Inventory and prioritization of EU/cross-boundary or international policies (WFD but not only) and topics to be addressed by the knowledge system to increase and share knowledge on inland waters (lakes, rivers, reservoirs, wetlands, snow, ice etc. excluding coastal and seas)
• Inventory of what is relevant from the national meteorological services duties including for climatology, and principles of interfacing with them
• Inventory of current actions, projects and programmes (including research projects, Research infrastructures, European Research Infrastructure Consortia – ERICs, cross-boundary programmes, Interreg) ongoing to get access to, to further develop a digital integrated inland water monitoring (from observations to forecasting or projections) that goes beyond the duties of the national meteorological services
• Inventory of current European digital systems of interest to build a digital twin for inland waters:
  • Actions and systems related to inland water observations and inland water data spaces (on land and including the land/sea interface at the shore) including environmental sensing as well as socio-economic data or data crowd-sourced
  • Modelling and data analytics capacities (including environmental representation, human activities, socio-economic dimension, from river catchment monitoring and management to flood and drought monitoring and forecasting) which are complementary to meteorological services and the Digital Twin on Extreme events
• Digital service portfolio relevant for a digital twin on inland waters in terms of content (data, models, data analytics tools) and in terms of digital environment based on existing assets mature enough and state-of-the-art for a leading edge digital twin of inland waters
• Roadmap for the integration of relevant existing assets and development of necessary digital functionalities for a digital twin for inland waters, interoperable with the Digital Twin Ocean to ensure the consistency and continuity of water management, interoperable and avoiding duplication of inland water functionalities already available in existing twins of Destination Earth and EU data spaces initiatives
• Architectural concept, interfaces, and standards to make data, models and technologies interoperable and integrable with the Digital Twin Ocean to propose a single digital environment for the Mission knowledge system and lighthouses.

The objective of the CSA is to prepare the development of the inland waters part (rivers, lakes, reservoirs, wetlands, snow and ice etc.) of the Mission Knowledge system, and address activities to be developed to make it integrated or interoperable with the Digital Twin Ocean for a unified Digital twin of Ocean and waters (addressing the hydrosphere as a whole) for the Mission and the lighthouses.

This should address the various facets of freshwater systems from static knowledge to dynamic monitoring of runoffs, hydrology, hydrodynamics, biogeochemistry to biology, interactions with soils and seas, for climate purposes, water management or natural disasters (e.g. flood, drought) etc.

Different scales shall be addressed from catchment to global perspective of the water cycle.

The targeted inland water digital twin shall support the implementation of the Mission through its different lighthouses and specially supporting the one dedicated to Danube.

The project should address the following:

Inventory

1. Make the inventory of EU and international policies relevant to inland waters that call for monitoring, forecast, projection or simulation of the inland water cycle in all its components: physical state, chemistry, geology, biology, both static and dynamic
2. Liaise with relevant stakeholders: researchers, industry (specially water industry operators), users (lie river basin agencies, water agencies) etc. to inventory their requirements for better policy implementation and planning in a context of climate change, considering specially the relevant lighthouses
3. Make the inventory of data sources and sensing capacities (environmental but as well socio-economic or citizen) available or required to support the twinning
4. Make the inventory of past or ongoing research projects, information systems and technical or operational programs (e.g. Copernicus, Wise) dealing with inland water monitoring and management and able to provide the basis for future digital services in terms of content, product, software (models, data analytics), tools or infrastructures (digital or sensors)
5. Liaise with the national meteorological services and with the digital twins in place in DestinationEarth to scope precisely the contribution of a twin on inland waters, avoiding duplication and preparing interfaces with these external systems to be able to propose an integrative approach to inland water monitoring and management

Critical analysis and preliminary design

Based on the outcomes of the above tasks:

1. Define a set of reference uses cases for a future digital twin development and set of requirements
2. Conduct a critical analysis of current technical achievements to propose a state-of-the-art content for an inland water digital twin (products, digital services, data analytics and digital tools including models), liaising with lighthouses, stakeholders to eventually define priorities of implementation
3. Define recommendations for a functional and system digital architecture (which data space, digital tools, digital backbone for computing and data management, APIs with external infrastructures, which reference R&D and infrastructures to consider integrating) that:

• can be integrated or at least interoperable with the Digital Twin Ocean (linked action with HORIZON-MISS-2021-OCEAN-IBA-01 EU Public Infrastructure for the European Digital Twin Ocean)
• is compatible and interoperable with the DestinationEarth initiative, especially with the two first twins that can include a hydrological component for climate and for extreme events) and with the digital platform
• enable the development of a mature, high-quality, scientifically state-of-art and pre-operation digital twin component for inland waters

Roadmap

1. Based on the recommendations defined above and the inventory made, develop a roadmap for the implementation of the Digital Twin for Inland waters including:

• A preliminary breakdown of the work, with priorities of implementation, into a stepped approach, in view of the complexity of the content, which will include physical, chemical and biological data
• A list of reference technical developments, data sources and existing programs/projects on which to build
• A list of reference use cases on which to build first with identified stakeholders, contributing preferably to the Danube lighthouse
• A tentative schedule, cost estimate and risk analysis
• Interfaces to be considered and set up to ensure the effective interoperability with external and ongoing developments like DTO, DestinE, ERICs
• A tentative technical governance to liaise with EU programs and with National meteorological services to foster an inclusive and integrative approach to the management of inland waters in a context of climate change and sustainable development

Projects should collaborate with projects funded under the topic HORIZON-INFRA-2022-EOSC-01-03 to adopt best practices regarding FAIR and open data sharing and with EU relevant programmes (Copernicus land and climate change monitoring services, EMODnet, WISE).