Environmental digital twins are digital environments that simulate aspects of ecosystems in the 'real' world. Over the last few years, the notion of 'digital twins' has emerged as a next generation technology that expands digitalisation of environmental
monitoring
in different areas.
While digital twins are becoming very popular in manufacturing industries to digitalise production processes, an early example of a type of environmental digital twin can also be found in the context of digital weather
forecasting
simulations that arose with programmable electronics since the 1950s. Nowadays such simulations rely on data from satellites, meteorological
sensors
, and algorithms to predict the weather.
Such connected infrastructures that bring together different sources of data,
sensors
, algorithms, and faster computational capabilities are now also created for 'twinning' other environments and ecosystems. These developments raise questions on what data is included or excluded in these digital environments, who is creating and funding them, and how do they represent and impact different ecosystems. This logbook shares examples of environmental digital twin projects across the world.