Digital Twins of Coastal Basins to Aid an Efficient Environmental Management

The project deals with the development of innovative tools, filling the need to integrate a wide range of data sources with numerical modelling, to support the management of complex coastal systems, also in the context of adaptation to climate change.

In particular, the project aims at implementing high-resolution digital twins of coastal basins. The digital twin should allow to simulate the hydrodynamics of the given coastal systems, including all additional phenomena relevant for assessing the ecosystem state, forecasting its short and long-term changes and allowing to develop mitigation, adaptation and replacement plans to deal with climate risks and optimisation of emergency responses to severe events such as storm surges.

At a global scale, the development of digital twins of the oceans is one of the priorities of the EU Restore our Ocean and Water [1,2,3] mission, which has its foundation in a set of core data infrastructures and ocean services such as Marine Service – CMEMS [4], Copernicus Data and Information Service [5], European Marine Observation and Data Network, EMODnet [6].

The first pilot application of the digital twin under development, addressing a concrete local case and demonstrating its usefulness, is to the Orbetello lagoon (Italy). The lagoon is a highly eutrophic coastal system, with frequent anoxic crises. Such a pilot application is particularly suited for testing a digital twin, to be used as a decision-supporting tool for informed management.

Project partners: DICEA-UNIFI (I. Simonetti, L. Cappietti), DHI (A. Pedroncini) with joint laboratory A-MARE: TWIN-COASTS @ A-MARE

Project duration: 2022-2024

Funding: Fondo Sociale Europeo REACT EU – Programma Operativo Nazionale Ricerca e Innovazione 2014-2020 con D.M. n. 1062 del 10 agosto 2021