Pillar 4: *Setting the agenda*
Based on our extensive experience of working across borders, sectors and disciplines, we will be thought leaders in how to use data and digital technology to understand and manage the natural environment, and we will push forward novel approaches. We will convene the community, championing new funding and driving new initiatives.
We are taking the lead on Digital Twins of the Environment offer a pathway for the discovery of new knowledge about environmental systems, improving our ability to model and predict the functioning of these systems, and provide information for decision making in real-time or for constructed scenarios.
Working with partners such as the Alan Turing Institute and NERC-supported research centres, UKCEH aims to stay at the forefront of research and development in this area and we are currently working on digital twins of soil systems, rivers, and of biodiversity. We intend to apply this technology across freshwater and terrestrial sciences, developing a federated approach allowing different digital twins to communicate to explore whole-systems science.
We will continue to develop Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) for our science that better meets the needs of the changing nature of science and takes advantage of the many areas of digital innovation. We will build on our long legacy of developing DRI services, including DataLabs as a platform to support collaborative, open and transparent science.
UKCEH is developing a digital twin of UK soils to improve our understanding of soil moisture and soil carbon, and decision-making around climate impacts such as floods and droughts, and net. Land InSight is bringing together a wide range of soil observations, from in situ monitoring networks and remote sensing, with models of the land surface and soils to produce real-time predictions of soil states. It links with other digital twins of the environment to improve the way soils are represented in other modelling systems.
