The rise of smart cities has brought an increase in digital twins. The European Union is taking it one step further with the creation of Earth’s digital twin.
A telecom industry trend for 2020, smart cities have implemented the use of digital twins more than ever before. Digital twins are becoming essential for the future of information technology.
Digital Twins
Dr. Michael Grieves coined the term “digital twins” in 2003 to express the idea of digital, virtual representations of physical products. A digital twin creates the digital blueprints in a virtual realm which can be used for various reasons. Dr. Michael Grieves utilized the idea to represent the product lifecycle.
Smart cities utilize digital twins as a blueprint of the city or a virtual replica. This helps to simplify the collection and integration of data within the city. The European Union (EU) has recently started the project of taking the digital twin concept from city-size to a worldwide replicate.
Destination Earth
The EU announced its ambitious initiative Destination Earth or DestinE. The objective of this project “is to develop a very high precision digital model of the Earth to monitor and simulate natural and human activity, and to develop and test scenarios that would enable more sustainable development and support European environmental policies.” Project Destination Earth will assist the EU in the following ways.
- Simulating Earth’s System – focusing on atmosphere, land, marine, etc.
- Monitoring Planet Health – studying climate change, natural resources, the states of the ocean, etc.
- Supporting EU Policies – assessing environmental and legislative measures
- Modeling Predictive Capabilities – anticipating natural disasters and extreme weather events
- Assisting Europe’s Technology– modeling and simulating industrial and technological capabilities
Developing Earth’s digital twin will take copious amounts of satellite information, data digitalization, and computing power. However, the benefits for humanity could be worth the investment.
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Written by the Experts at GeoTel
