Presentation Information
[s8HxLUFw-04]From Demonstrators to Decisions: Digital Twins Delivering Ocean Intelligence for Shelf Seas
*Juliane Wihsgott1 (1. Plymouth Marine Laboratory (UK))
Shelf seas are where society meets and interacts with the ocean. They sustain productive
ecosystems and underpin energy security and global shipping. A growing number of sectors
now compete for their space and resources. They are also changing rapidly, driven by
climate change and human activity, and increasingly serve as the setting for climate
mitigation itself, from offshore wind to marine carbon dioxide removal. This makes them
difficult to predict: key processes are short-lived and can occur over fine scales, subsurface
processes lie beyond the reach of Earth Observation, and human pressures add further
complexity to an already shifting baseline. Meeting this challenge requires observations and
models that continuously inform each other, rather than operating in isolation.
The SyncED-Ocean demonstrator, one of the first operational Digital Twins of the Ocean
(DTO) implementations, showed that this loop can be closed. During a two-month campaign
in a dynamic coastal sea, in-situ and satellite observations informed a coupled physical-
biogeochemical model. Machine learning, with human oversight, guided autonomous gliders
to collect targeted subsurface observations, assimilated daily to improve forecast skill.
But what changes when a DTO must serve multiple users, sectors, and pressures
simultaneously? Mitigation measures are themselves interventions, and their effects must be
detected, attributed and verified against natural variability. It will take multiple twins of
infrastructure, ecosystems and interventions that work together as a system. This talk
explores the case for building the next generation of DTOs around questions, rather than
data volume: defining the expected state, detecting departures from it, and knowing when
additional sampling adds little value. Partnering with decision-makers will be key to ensuring
DTOs inform real decisions.
ecosystems and underpin energy security and global shipping. A growing number of sectors
now compete for their space and resources. They are also changing rapidly, driven by
climate change and human activity, and increasingly serve as the setting for climate
mitigation itself, from offshore wind to marine carbon dioxide removal. This makes them
difficult to predict: key processes are short-lived and can occur over fine scales, subsurface
processes lie beyond the reach of Earth Observation, and human pressures add further
complexity to an already shifting baseline. Meeting this challenge requires observations and
models that continuously inform each other, rather than operating in isolation.
The SyncED-Ocean demonstrator, one of the first operational Digital Twins of the Ocean
(DTO) implementations, showed that this loop can be closed. During a two-month campaign
in a dynamic coastal sea, in-situ and satellite observations informed a coupled physical-
biogeochemical model. Machine learning, with human oversight, guided autonomous gliders
to collect targeted subsurface observations, assimilated daily to improve forecast skill.
But what changes when a DTO must serve multiple users, sectors, and pressures
simultaneously? Mitigation measures are themselves interventions, and their effects must be
detected, attributed and verified against natural variability. It will take multiple twins of
infrastructure, ecosystems and interventions that work together as a system. This talk
explores the case for building the next generation of DTOs around questions, rather than
data volume: defining the expected state, detecting departures from it, and knowing when
additional sampling adds little value. Partnering with decision-makers will be key to ensuring
DTOs inform real decisions.
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