TerraTwin

In recent years, the EU has adopted strategies to address climate change and biodiversity loss, such as the “EU Strategy on Biodiversity by 2030.” Projects like Destination Earth (DestinE) and the European Space Agency's Digital Twin Earth are already monitoring climate changes and their interactions with biodiversity. However, there are areas needing further development, such as socio-economic data integration, stakeholder engagement, and scalable infrastructure. The TerraTwin Project aims to address these gaps by developing a Digital Twin (DT) for monitoring and modeling ecosystem health in a holistic manner. This DT will include land, water systems (lakes, rivers, seas), and meteorological data, alongside socio-economic factors. Utilizing historical, current, and near real-time data from sources like Copernicus for Atmosphere and Climate Change, the DT will assess land-sea ecosystem interplay and its impact on biodiversity, offering forecasting capabilities. A predictive system based on historical climatic disaster data will assess pre- and post-event situations to implement adaptive and protective strategies. Current efforts tend to study climate impacts on terrestrial and marine biodiversity separately, missing the interconnectedness of land-sea-atmosphere ecosystems. TerraTwin will provide a comprehensive ecosystem assessment to better predict future events and enhance intervention strategies. We will use historical data from demo sites, online tools, databases, Copernicus, and real-time meteorological data to develop and train the ecosystem DT using AI. This holistic approach aims to deliver a complete understanding of climate, marine, and terrestrial biodiversity connections, enabling better prediction of future events and improving the effectiveness of interventions.