Environmental management using a digital twin

Abstract

Robust environmental management is based on evidence of ecosystem health and anthropogenic harms gleaned from successful environmental monitoring. Successful monitoring involves the synthesis of observations from a variety of sources to represent a site in its current and past states, the anticipation of future conditions, and communicate the findings to decision-makers for environmental management and other stakeholders; a lack of such synthesis and communication has been identified as a shortcoming in Environmental Impact Assessment. However, a suitable digital platform for this synthesis and communication has not yet been developed. Digital twins, an approach from engineering, may offer a solution with advantages over other approaches traditionally employed in ecosystem monitoring. Here a process and considerations for conducting the use case analysis of a digital twin for environmental monitoring is presented, including identifying users, establishing their requirements, refining use cases based on data practicalities, planning analyses and data/model integrations, and developing the user interface. The process is demonstrated using a case study, developing use cases for an ecological digital twin of a UK Marine Protected Area, which could be generalised as use cases for a digital twin for ecosystem monitoring of a conservation area. Considerations for constructing a digital twin based on these use cases are discussed, including the practicalities of using remotely-sensed biological data; gaps in the scientific, technological and data management capabilities; the role of expertise in adding value beyond simple data collation data; and federation of digital twins. Finally, challenges and benefits to using a digital twin approach to informing conservation management are summarised.