Information Systems Technology for NASA Earth Systems Digital Twins (ESDT)

The term “Digital Twin” was first used in 2002 for product lifecycle management. Since then, Digital Twin concepts have been proposed in various domains until very recently for Earth Science.
For NASA’s Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) Program, an Earth System Digital Twin (ESDT) is defined as composed of three components:
1. A Digital Replica, i.e., an integrated picture of the past and current states of Earth systems
2. Forecasting capabilities, providing an integrated picture of how Earth systems will evolve in the future from the current state
3. Impact Assessment capabilities, providing an integrated picture of how Earth systems could evolve under different hypothetical what-if scenarios.
Developing such a vision will require technologies related to: integrating continuous observations from various disparate sources; developing frameworks that builds on inter-connected models; improving the speed and accuracy of integrated prediction, analysis and visualization capabilities (e.g., by using machine learning); and utilizing causality and uncertainty quantification to improve our understanding of the evolution of Earth Science systems as a function of their interactions with other Earth and human systems. In addition, AIST is also investigating interoperability standards to federate multiple Digital Twins, as well as computational resources required by those systems.