Center for Sensing Solutions - Projects - EnvironTwin

EnvironTwin

Service for the development of digital twins to predict environmental management scenarios through dynamic reconstruction of the Alpine environment

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Project duration: September 2023 - December 2026
Project status: ongoing
Funding:
FESR (EU funding / Project)
Institutes: Center for Sensing Solutions, Institute for Earth Observation, Institute for Alpine Environment, Institute for Renewable Energy, terraXcube

The EnvironTwin project aims to create a service for the development of digital twins to predict environmental management scenarios. The service enhances the offerings of the Sensor System Technology LAB and the Environmental Data Platform (EDP) data infrastructure providing research, public administration, and entrepreneurs with information on the evolutionary state, risks, and possible solutions in the agriculture, forestry and the environmental fields. The project harnesses advanced technologies like smart sensors, cloud computing, sophisticated data modeling, and visualization techniques. The main challenges lie in acquiring high-quality data and integrating them into simulation models. The project provides a tool to understand natural phenomena affected by climate change and human interactions, predicting how they can be influenced and managed effectively. From an impact perspective, the service could efficiently simulate resource management interventions and will be demonstrated and validated using case studies from various applied research disciplines, leveraging the expertise of environmental, agronomy, and computer science specialists from the involved Eurac Research institutes.

Contact persons: Roberto Monsorno, Abraham Mejia Aguilar

WP1 Project Management and Communication

The objective of WP1 is to co-ordinate and manage the activities of the whole project as well as to manage the relations between the funding body (project owner, ERDF programme co-ordinator) and the project team. Activities include technical coordination (meetings, quality control of work, monitoring of project progress) and administrative activities (management reports and communication between the Province and partners).

A further objective of WP1 is to coordinate and ensure the scientific and different media communication of the project, its implementation, results and services of the Sensor System Technology lab.

In particular, during the first year, a public event will be organised at the NOI Technology Park, such as a press conference, to open a line of communication with local stakeholders. At the end of the project, during its closing phase, a final event will be held to present the results of the project. Starting in the second year of the project, two workshops will be organised to foster the dissemination and use of the digital twin service.

The results obtained within WP3, WP4 and WP5 will be presented during international scientific conferences attended by the research staff involved in the project

WP2 Digital Twin platform: Design, supply and configuration of instrumentation and infrastructure

The objective of WP2 is to build the infrastructure enabling the development of the multidimensional digital twins that will be implemented in WP3. Specific objectives of the WP are (i) The supply and commissioning of instrumentation and sensor technologies for digital shadowing, (ii) The supply, installation and configuration of the computing infrastructure and its integration into the existing infrastructure (EDP), (iii) the realisation of a CD/CI (continuous development/continuous integration) environment to orchestrate the utilisation of Resources and automate the generation of Digital Twins, (iv) combining data from heterogeneous sources by building a suitable infrastructure to evolve the EDP into an environment capable of generating and studying Digital Twins.

The project team will work from the EDP by integrating new components and improving the performance, robustness and replicability of processes for the design, implementation and operation of digital twins.

The instrumentation for the sensors will be purchased in the first half of the project, and the laboratory environment will be configured to accommodate it. Within the first year of the project, the computing nodes equipped with GPGUs will also be purchased, and they will be configured with the SW components.

A very important Activity of WP2 is to make the EDP scalable, considering how modules can be installed and configured in the Eurac infrastructure, and at the same time can be reused in international projects (InterTwin, SYMBIOSIST, ScaleAGdata, ). A necessary activity will concern the harmonisation of the collected heterogeneous data. The results achieved in the EDP will be exploited, but a new API will be introduced to enable the integration and merging of heterogeneous data. At the state of the art there is an API that implements the international JSON-LD standard. The API for Context Information Management of NGSI-LD will be one of the components installed in the infrastructure.

WP3 Digital Twin – Use cases: Development and Validation Digital Twins

Digital twins (DT) offer new possibilities to optimise, monitor, simulate, predict, diagnose and control the behaviour of physical processes. They provide information to create new decision support systems and optimise management and intervention operations. The objective of this WP is to implement and validate specific digital twins that consider various aspects of the interaction between the natural environment and human activity. Each case study brings common needs to collect, harmonise and prepare data that feed the digital twin. However, each case study must develop the predictive model that considers aspects peculiar to the application domain. A first Activity (3.1) of data collection with intelligent sensors surveyed with in-situ precision instruments (Lidar, hyperspectral, thermal) on UAV platforms and satellite data will allow the creation of high-precision digital geographic models and with the instrumentation prepared in WP2 will prepare the subsequent modelling, simulation and validation Activities (Activity 3. 2, 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5) for forest management, agri-forestry, alpine meadow and pasture management and prevention of rock glacier dynamics.

The combination of these techniques for collecting data at different resolutions will improve the understanding of the dynamics of observed phenomena exposed to climatic events, even extreme ones (winds, droughts, pests), and enable a better understanding of how to intervene.

WP4 Service sustainability and scalability

The aim of the WP is to make the Digital Twin service sustainable in the medium and long term. To this end, it is necessary to define two specific objectives: (i) the promotion of synergies and collaborations with local companies and (ii) the synergy with other research institutes of Eurac Research and subsequently with Unibz and Laimburg for the creation of accurate and multidisciplinary predictive models.

The European Digital Innovation Hubs network will act as a driving force in the creation of new synergies with international projects and initiatives.

The medium-term project will be aimed at SMEs and provincial control bodies that wish to monitor critical processes by means of a sensor system, a specific data model and a predictive event model that will then contribute to the intelligent control of management operations and process intervention.

The DTs can include a range of measurable (even if not perceived by humans) and multidimensional parameters (eg satellite images and multidimensional views) and data provided by other information owners.

The service offered will follow the following sequence of events: study of the specific problem of the process being observed, creation of the data acquisition network for the creation of the virtual twin, defStartne of the appropriate type of predictive model (physical, data driven or combination of both), implementation, training and dataset of the AI algorithm and eventual implementation of process control.

Depending on the process to be observed, the choice and creation of the predictive model may be proposed directly by the service user or be an integral part of the offer. Depending on the complexity' synergies will be exploited to act as a technology transfer between the research and the beneficiaries of the service.

The key points to be developed will be:

- Create regional, national and international synergies with experts in the field of predictive models from the selected use cases.

- Stimulate companies by involving the NOI and its ecosystem by showing the potential of the proposed approach and integrate new DT models

- Create prototype services that can demonstrate the effectiveness of the solution and prepare it to be scalable to commercial services.

Publications

Termoregolazione nell'ottica del Comfort Igrotermico:dall'ascolto del Proprio Corpo all'interpretazione di dati da sistemi integrati [(1) Un'indagine sulla sensibilità umana alla temperatura ambientale (2) Approccio multi-sensore per stimare il comfort termo-igrometrico nello sport in montagna].
Klimahouse (2024)
Exhibition

Conference: Klimahouse 2024 | Bolzano | 31.1.2024 - 4.2.2024

More information: https://www.aipnd.it/img/uploads/file/aipnd-kimahouse-bolzan ...

From Leaves to Forests: How to Map Stress in Plants due to Climate Change
Chew YZ, Chuprikova E, Mejia-Aguilar A, Obojes N, Kumke H, Meng L (2024)
Conference proceedings article

Conference: EuroCarto 2024 | Vienna | 9.9.2024 - 11.9.2024

More information: https://ica-abs.copernicus.org/articles/7/24/2024/

https://doi.org/10.5194/ica-abs-7-24-2024

Near Real-Time Mapping to Estimate Snow Cover Fraction Area
Romero Candanedo G, Chuprikova E, Mejia-Aguilar A, Kumke H, Meng L (2024)
Conference proceedings article

Conference: EuroCarto 2024 | Vienna | 9.9.2024 - 11.9.2024

More information: https://ica-abs.copernicus.org/articles/7/140/2024/

https://doi.org/10.5194/ica-abs-7-140-2024