Towards an ecosystem for environmental digital twins 

Piloting an Information Management Framework for Environmental Digital Twins (Pilot IMFe) builds upon the roadmap jointly commissioned by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC/UKRI) and the Met Office in 2021. This roadmap articulates the framework of secure, resilient and interoperable data required to develop agreed standards upon which a federated system of environmental digital twins may designed and used.

A digital twin is a virtual representation of an object or system updated as the system changes using observations. Environmental digital twins have the potential to significantly improve our understanding of the natural environment, adding value to data from a range of sources.

The Pilot IMFe will apply the roadmap to a develop a Digital Twin of the Haig Fras Marine Protected Area (MPA) along with a publicly accessible digital twin asset register to ensure that components and concepts are reusable in future projects and opportunities for delivering interoperability are fully explored.