European Digital Twin Ocean – EDITO ModelLab
The European Digital Twin Ocean platform makes knowledge, data and tools available to every citizen, researcher and policymaker to enable them to better use marine and coastal areas worldwide. The EDITO ModelLab also gives them the opportunity to contribute with their own knowledge.
For the Netherlands, the North Sea is an important place when it comes to biodiversity, energy supply, transport and fisheries. The Dutch coastline is also important for the safety of its inhabitants. A digital representation of what is going on in that sea and near to the coast is important to make evidence based decisions.
European Digital Twin Ocean (EDITO) platform
The European Digital Twin Ocean (EDITO) platform is being developed with European partners. They are helping to develop a system in which the oceans, seas and coastal system are modelled and visualised. New techniques make a lot of data rapidly available, and EDITO makes this accessible.
With recent developments in Data Science and Software Engineering, there are many more opportunities to run numerical software online and with remote infrastructure. For instance, EDITO offers users options to compute new scenarios without having to install or even download anything to do so. In addition, it integrates different software models on its platform, allowing for new combinations. For example, one can combine an Italian-made hydrodynamic coastal model with an Ecological Impact tool of Deltares.
In addition, artificial intelligence enables much faster calculations. We can include satellite data as well as in-situ data (e.g. from buoys), but also modelled data in the calculation. Through data assimilation, algorithms can be trained with all this knowledge. These algorithms are then used to make predictions, without having to re-simulate the physics.
In 2023 and 2024, the focus is on the underlying modelling infrastructure. Finally, 2025 revolves around the users. Both technical and non-technical users who want to work with the tools and data or want to make use of the insights will be introduced to the platform and learn how to use it for their purpose. One of the occasions where researchers and policymakers will be trained is a hackathon during the United Nations Ocean Conference in June 2025 in Nice.
