A deeper understanding of conditions related to floods, droughts and other extreme water-related events can be achieved with new digital twin Earth (DTE) models of the terrestrial water cycle. A group of researchers in Europe based the modeling scheme on updated satellite and Earth observation data documenting soil moisture, precipitation, evaporation, river discharge and snow depth.

Initial efforts to develop the interactive tool focused on the Po Valley of Italy and were followed by an expansion to encompass other parts of the Mediterranean basin. The DTE system will eventually cover all of Europe and help fine-tune analytical and modeling principles that can be applied worldwide.

The DTE cloud-based platform described in Frontiers in Science includes water data variables and trends for the 2016-2022 period and is intended to strengthen flood and landslide prediction, enhance irrigation for precision agriculture and otherwise optimize water resource management. Efforts are ongoing to include more granular high-resolution data and precise modeling modes to improve the accuracy of applications on a more local level.

Scientists from the National Research Council of Italy, University of Perugia (Italy), Vienna University of Technology (Austria), University of Genoa (Italy), Ghent University (Belgium), Meteorological Environmental Earth Observation s.r.l. (Italy), Earth Observation Data Centre for Water Resources Monitoring GmbH (Austria), University of Bologna (Italy), Institute for Earth Observation (Italy), University of València (Spain) and the European Space Agency (Italy) are participating in this research.