BUILDING A DIGITAL TWIN OF THE ITALIAN COASTS

Abstract

The “Destination Earth” initiative of the European Union encompasses the creation of Digital Twin Earths (DTEs), high-precision digital models of the Earth integrating various aspects of the Earth’s system to monitor and simulate natural phenomena and related human activities, being able to explore the past, understand the present, and build predictive models of the future. To achieve this goal, huge amounts of good-quality data are necessary, but also, means to combine and add further utility to them.To tackle this problem, we created a novel web application that implements the mediator-wrapper architecture as a data integration strategy and uses only open-source software to put together more than 60 geospatial layers from 3 different data sources. This application is a proof of concept of how data integration can be used to implement Digital Twins and is focused solely on the Italian coasts. It integrates data from Copernicus and WorldPop to provide tools for analysing and describing the interaction of marine, land, and demographic variables on coastal areas. It offers both visualization and analysis capabilities, which is a unique feature amongst similar applications, thanks to the implementation of virtual data integration and geospatial data standards.