Digital Twins of the Earth

The digital transformation of society underpins the development of a cyber-physical world that could prove essential in making human development sustainable and thus save the planet. Digital Twins of the Earth are instrumental in connecting the physical and virtual realms and in generating the knowledge required to minimize the impact of our society on the Earth – as depicted in Fig. 2. The DT of Earth systems represent Earth entities (components, processes, or phenomena) to capture their behavior over time, allow to run simulations, and generate actionable intelligence. For these reasons, there are already many research and innovation projects worldwide as well as initiatives applying the DT of Earth paradigm. The DTs of the Earth paradigm differ from the more traditional digital models because of the full synchronization of the digital representation with the Earth entity. Therefore, a DT of the Earth is a living digital simulation model that modifies and changes itself as its Earth counterpart changes. This important characteristic raises several challenges to the scientific and engineering communities.