The crane radar: Development and deployment of an operational eco-digital twin
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: As virtual copies of real-world phenomena, digital twins (DTs) are rapidly gaining popularity in industry, academia and policy. Their main strength is informing decision makers in an operational environment by giving detailed up-to-date information about the systems represented in the DTs, such as industrial production systems or weather forecasts. By running continuous predictions, DTs evolve synchronous with the real world and related data, making DTs a particularly powerful tool to study systems that are changing beyond their historic realm. Thereby, DTs guide policy makers in addressing twenty-first century challenges.Yet, it is also a new concept to many scientists and policy makers in the environmental domain, which demands more clarity about what DTs are and how they are built, in order to support constructive developments in digital twining. This paper therefore aims to outline the main concept and the steps involved in building DTs for ecological decision making. By showing an example of the crane radar, a real-time DT of the common crane (Grus grus) migration, this paper illustrates what DTs could look like in ecology, and which challenges modellers face towards actual deployment of their DT in an operational environment.The most important challenges identified here are: ex ante quality and error control of the input data; accounting for time lags between observations and data availability; harmonising the updating frequencies and temporal resolutions of models and data; developing robust model/software code to keep DTs alive; the necessity of learning new skills for ecological modellers; and effectively communicating DT outputs to stakeholders. A real quantitative evaluation of the contribution of the crane radar to operational decision making is, however, still missing.
Source: Ecological Informatics
Author: K. De Koning
Institution: Wageningen University & Research
Language: English
Subfield: Geology
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,200
OpenAlex ID: W4405106095