Digital Ecosystems for Developing Digital Twins of the Earth

Developing Digital Twins of the Earth.md · GitHub

Big data and AI systems have enabled the implementation of the Digital Twin paradigm in all sectors of society
DEs promise to be a flexible and operative framework that allow the development of local, national, and international Digital Twins
However, designing and implementing an effective collaborative DE is far more difficult than a traditional digital system
The principles, patterns, and architectural viewpoints discussed in the manuscript present a set of conditions, best practices, and base capabilities for building a knowledge framework
Keywords: digital ecosystem; digital twins; green deal data space; remote sensing; earth observation; system-of-systems engineering; metasystems; SDGs; interoperability science

Shifting Paradigms in a Digitally Transformed Society

Universal connectivity to the "network" and the consequent emergences of innovative and global economic models (Web, Data, and Platform economies) have profoundly changed all sectors of our society, including the scientific one.
With the advent of the Digital Transformation, the interconnection between the physical and the digital world has become almost complete: economic, industrial, and social relationships have been moved to the “cyber-physical” world, where all the relevant stakeholders are included more easily and can intensively cooperate in generating the knowledge required for addressing a given purpose.

is achieved through specialized online platforms that interact with users and stakeholders and provide personalized services
This approach offers a richer user experience, applying the principles of the platform economy, and offers a deeper understanding of the user’s needs and wants
A.k.a. remote sensing

The advent of IoT has significantly evolved remote-sensing capacities.
Big Earth Data (BED) science aims at studying the set of natural and social phenomena characterizing the Earth system, a class of entities encompassing the local and global changes affecting the natural cycles, the deep under-surface processes, and the interconnections with human society (i.e., our social and economic systems).
Datafication and the information and knowledge sharing paradigms are at the core of the second generation of IoT platforms.

The goal of Destination Earth is to develop a dynamic, interactive, multi-dimensional, and data intensive replica of the Earth which would enable different user groups (public, scientific, private) to interact with vast amounts of natural and man-made natural resources.
Remote Sens. and in situ observations provide a comprehensive database of time series to be automatically analyzed by AI and identify changes.

While the primary objective of system engineering is the optimization of system performance, ecosystem engineering is concerned more with satisficing performance
The satisficing approach is the preferable (i.e., more rational) choice for decision-making when optimization is not feasible or too expensive to achieve due to complexity or to near-real time requirements.

A DE is supposed to build on existing building blocks, what we call the enterprise systems, stimulating the creation of new elements to fill possible gaps and realizing a complex SoS (or super-system)
The success of a DE mostly depends on the appropriate governance of the ecosystem as a whole
DEs are constantly subject to changes for both internal reasons and external reasons
Without any control, those changes could (in principle) be very disruptive and make it impossible for the DE to survive and, in particular, to continue the provision of its services for a social utility

DEs are constantly subject to changes for both internal reasons (e.g., enterprise system changes, new system addition, etc.) and external reasons (for example, changes in the societal and technological environment where the DE operates).
Without any control, those changes could (in principle) be very disruptive and make it impossible for the DE to survive and, in particular, to continue the provision of its services for a social utility.
A DE must be able to support the diverse and evolving levels of belonging (to the DE) versus autonomy (from the DE), which are decided by each of its enterprise organizations. These compromises characterize all the different constituent systems and can evolve in time.

To implement a DE providing DTs of the Earth, the technological reference framework should consider the following engineering and interoperability paradigms and models
Multi-Cloud Approach and Virtual Cloud Paradigm
IoT-Edge/Fog-Cloud
Cloud data centers are large facilities deployed in a limited number of locations

To implement a DE providing DTs of the Earth, the technological reference framework should consider the following engineering and interoperability paradigms and models
Multi-Cloud Approach and Virtual Cloud Paradigm
IoT-Edge/Fog-Cloud.
Serverless Computing (Supporting Near Real-Time Services).
HPC-as-a-Service: the provision of high-level processing capacity to customers through the cloud.

A first development tested the realization of the Destination Earth DE, which was based on a virtual multi-cloud environment consisting of a set of heterogeneous scalable infrastructures managed or utilized by the European Commission, ESA, ECMWF, and EUMETSAT.
Most of the discussed DE principles and patterns were fruitfully tested (e.g., flexibility and usability).
GAIA-X Initiative
This project aims to develop an open, transparent digital ecosystem, where data and services can be made available, collated, and shared in an environment of trust.

It is important to first design a good process and then recognize the useful technology to leverage the process in an effective way
The human factor is an important factor to be considered too
We strongly believe that digital ecosystems are the new model to develop a distributed knowledge system among multiple stakeholders