Exploring the Future of Biodiversity and Climate Digital Twins
On 27 February 2025, the BioDT project hosted a collaborative webinar bringing together leading European digital twin (DT) initiatives to explore how modelling tools can support nature protection, biodiversity monitoring, and climate resilience. With more than 90 participants from 24 countries, the event reflected the growing interest in building synergies across digital twin projects in the environmental domain.
Showcasing Europe’s Digital Twin Initiatives
The session featured presentations from major EU-funded DT projects, including:
- Destination Earth (DestinE) – Highlighted its evolving ecosystem and AI-powered Earth system models.
- ClimateDT – Focused on scenario-based analysis for climate adaptation.
- TerraDT – A new expansion of DestinE targeting glacier, aerosol, and sea ice modelling.
- DT-GEO – Addressed geophysical extremes such as earthquakes.
- InterTwin – Shared progress on building a common open-source software framework for scientific digital twins.
BioDT presented its own progress on developing prototype digital twins for biodiversity, showcasing their potential to support research and policy under climate change scenarios.
Shared Challenges and Opportunities
Across all initiatives, the panel discussions uncovered a series of common themes:
- The need for interoperability across DTs, data platforms, and modelling tools.
- The importance of standardised, FAIR-compliant data to support reuse and integration.
- Ensuring long-term sustainability and scalability by connecting to infrastructures like EOSC and EuroHPC.
- Making digital twins more accessible to non-technical users through simplified interfaces and documentation.
Speakers also reflected on how AI can enhance prediction, while acknowledging that human expertise remains essential for stewardship and validation.
Community Engagement and Feedback
An interactive session with participants revealed strong support for the use of predictive digital models, the need for open data sharing, and the value of cross-sector collaboration in advancing environmental digital twins. At the same time, concerns were raised regarding the technical complexity of current tools and the need for more user-friendly access to DT services.
What’s Next for the Projects
Each project shared upcoming milestones, including:
- BioDT: Finalising and launching its four biodiversity prototype DTs, with an emphasis on integration and usability.
- ClimateDT: Publishing its knowledge base and developing user scenarios.
- TerraDT: Hosting a community workshop in April and launching its platform in June 2025.
- DT-GEO: Running end-to-end pilot simulations in the second half of 2025.
- InterTwin: Final event planned for May 2025 and ongoing work on a DT-enabling framework.
Watch the Webinar and Stay Connected
Did you miss the event? The full recording is available on the BioDT YouTube channel.