What is the European Digital Twin Ocean?
The European Digital Twin Ocean is a virtual replica of the ocean. It integrates data from many different sources, including satellites, sensors, computer models and even personal devices like smartphone apps. These different data sources constantly “feed” the Digital Twin to provide continuous and up-to-date information about the ocean: from the behaviour of marine species to weather patterns, chemical processes, economic activities and much more.
The European Digital Twin Ocean uses real-time and historical data to represent the past and present and numerical models to simulate possible future scenarios. It can help us answer questions around what’s happened, what’s happening now, and what might happen next with an unparalleled level of detail and accuracy. It fuels knowledge, decision-making and action for a sustainable ocean.
The European Digital Twin Ocean was announced by President von der Leyen at the One Ocean Summit in Brest in February 2022. Its ambition is to make ocean knowledge readily available to citizens, entrepreneurs, scientists and policy-makers by providing them with an innovative set of user-driven, interactive and data visualisation tools. This knowledge will help design the most effective ways to restore marine and coastal habitats, support a sustainable blue economy and mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Leveraging existing European science and assets, it will provide consistent high-resolution, multi-dimensional analyses and forecasts of the ocean. This includes its physical, chemical, biological, socio-ecological and economical dimensions, with forecasting periods ranging from seasons to multi-decades. The European Digital Twin Ocean will transform data into knowledge for everyone's benefit.
Conceived as a public service and a public good , the European Commission has been investing, through the Mission Restore our Ocean and Waters work programme, about €15 million annually since 2021 to develop the European Digital Twin Ocean, including EDITO, its core public infrastructure. This complements the €19 million Iliad project, funded under the Green Deal Call for research proposals to pilot the concept, as well as a number of research projects developing the background science.
This infographic explains what the digital twin of the ocean is, how it works and the things it will help us understand and do.
EDITO: the core infrastructure of the European Digital Twin Ocean, building on existing assets
In the last decade, the European Union has developed core data infrastructures and ocean services such as
- Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS)
- Copernicus Data and Information access services (DIAS)
- European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet)
They offer global and pan-European quality-controlled ocean observation data, forecasts, analysis and projections.
They offer global and pan-European quality-controlled ocean observation data, forecasts, analysis and projections.
To develop the core, public infrastructure platform of the European Digital Twin Ocean (EDITO) the European Commission has built on those existing assets, and will connect them with similar systems focused on inland waters (i.e., IDEATION CSA project) and further integrate the whole knowledge value chain, from observations to end-user applications thanks to the latest digital technologies.
To this aim, the European Commission has entrusted 2 main operators behind the CMEMS and EMODnet programmes, namely Mercator Ocean International and the Flanders Marine Institute, to develop EDITO (https://www.edito.eu). EDITO is an open infrastructure, conceived to facilitate the development of digital twin applications and services. It is co-designed and co-developed with all interested parties, who may also contribute with data, models, and intermediate or final services.
The first prototype of the core infrastructure, EDITO, has been unveiled at the Digital Ocean Forum 2024 and is accessible to all via https://www.edito.eu/.
Building on existing European assets, the public infrastructure platform of the European Digital Twin Ocean upgrades, combines and integrates data and services from EMODnet and the Copernicus Marine Service into a single digital framework. By building on these established European infrastructures, EDITO harmonizes high-resolution ocean observation data, forecasts, and analysis.
Users can explore data using cutting-edge tools to inform decisions, build their own digital twins, apps and services, or use existing tools to predict and assess the impact of climate scenarios and human activities.
Importance to other policies and initiatives
The European Digital Twin of the Ocean is a main element of the Digital Ocean Knowledge System under the EU Mission Restore our Ocean and Waters.
It is also a priority in many different initiatives such as the International Ocean Governance, the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, the All-Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance and the G7 working group Future of the Seas and Oceans Initiative which the EU contributes to.
EDITO builds on the EU Digital Agenda, will be interoperable with Destination Earth, and will benefit from the upcoming initiative for Ocean Observation.
What can we use the public platform of the European Digital Twin Ocean for?
The European Digital Twin Ocean is being built with the cooperation of many users. Some build and run new digital tools like models and simulations, share data, or collaborate with other technical users. Others explore data, run simulations, and consider actions to take based on this information. Everyone has a role to play and benefits from each other’s contributions and interactions via EDITO.
For example:
Researchers, including marine and data scientists, can use the EDITO platform to build and run digital twins, explore data, share their apps and services and secure uptake and legacy for their projects.
Entrepreneurs such as blue economy actors could use EDITO to plan the most fuel-efficient shipping routes or determine the optimal location for an aquaculture pen, wind farm or tidal turbine.
Policymakers such as local authorities could use EDITO to explore different solutions for protecting coastal areas from rising sea levels and climate change threats.
NGOs and environmental groups who advocate for a clean, sustainable ocean and protected marine areas can use EDITO to better support their agendas - from protecting biodiversity, to managing marine pollution.
EDITO can also fulfil an educational purpose for citizens that may lead to a bluer generation. Educators, artists, influencers, journalists, families, and individuals can use What-if Scenarios to learn and show what, where and why some of the most talked-about ocean and coastal issues are occurring, increasing the ocean literacy levels in society.
How does the EDITO platform work to power the European Digital Twin Ocean?
EDITO is a data lake (a high-speed central storage) of all EMODnet and Copernicus Marine products. Building on existing European assets, the public infrastructure platform of the European Digital Twin Ocean upgrades, combines and integrates data and services from EMODnet and the Copernicus Marine Service into a single digital framework. By building on these established European infrastructures, EDITO harmonizes high-resolution ocean observation data, forecasts, and analysis.
Located beside the data are virtual machines that run e.g., Jupyter notebooks, Python, etc. The concept is that, if you want to process Big Data, then you bring your code to EDITO rather than download the data sets. When you access datalab.dive.edito.eu you are running your code on virtual machines beside the data. You are still free to download data from the existing EMODnet and Copernicus Marine Portals to work on locally. EDITO is a complementary service focused on providing Cloud Computing services and the data products on the respective portals are identical to what is available through EDITO.
Funding
The following related calls for proposal are open or opening soon under Horizon Europe.
The following related calls for proposal supporting the European Digital Twin Ocean are closed and grants have been, or are being, awarded:
- HORIZON-MISS-2025-03-OCEAN-08: EU Digital Twin Ocean: Contribution to the European Digital Twin Ocean core infrastructure through applications for sustainable ocean management
- HORIZON-MISS-2023-OCEAN-01-09: Roadmap towards the integration of inland waters into the Digital Twin Ocean
- HORIZON-MISS-2023-OCEAN-01-08: Integration of socio-ecological models into the Digital Twin Ocean
- HORIZON-CL6-2024-CLIMATE-01-6: Ocean models for seasonal to decadal regional climate impacts and feedbacks
- HORIZON-MISS-2021-OCEAN-05-01: Underlying models for the European Digital Twin Ocean
- HORIZON-MISS-2022-OCEAN-01-07: Integration of biodiversity monitoring data into the Digital Twin Ocean
- HORIZON-INFRA-2022-EOSC-01-03: FAIR and open data sharing in support of healthy oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters
Related initiatives and projects
EU research projects
EDITO 2
EDITO is the public infrastructure of the European Digital Twin Ocean. The platform currently offers a growing array of tools to develop digital twins, support science-based decision-making and ensure maximum impact for research and innovation actions across the key objectives of the EU Mission Ocean and Waters: protect biodiversity, stop marine pollution and support a sustainable blue economy. Building on prior efforts (2022–2025), now in its second phase (2025-2028), the EU-funded EDITO 2 project aims to scale up the platform’s infrastructure and grow the community towards further advancing the co-creation of the European Digital Twin Ocean to make ocean information openly available to all. Diverse users stand to benefit from EDITO, including researchers, policymakers, innovators, entrepreneurs and citizens.
EDITO-Infra
EDITO-Infra (2023-2025) developed EDITO, the underpinning infrastructure of the European Digital Twin Ocean. The project validated the potential of the European Digital Twin Ocean by upgrading, combining, and integrating key service components of existing EU ocean observing, monitoring and data programs, namely Copernicus Marine Service and the European Marine Observation & Data Network (EMODnet), into a single digital framework.
EDITO-Model Lab
EDITO-Model Lab (2023-2025) prepared the next generation of ocean models, to be integrated into the EDITO to enable the development of what-if scenarios and other cutting-edge tools. ). It ensured access to required input and validation data (from EMODnet, EuroGOOS, ECMWF, Copernicus Services and Sentinels satellite observations) and to high-performance and distributed computing facilities (from EuroHPC for HPC and other cloud computing resources).
DT-BioFlow and DIGI4ECO
DTO-BioFlow is dedicated to facilitating access to previously unused marine biodiversity data. It also aims to support the sustainable integration of both existing and new data from various sources. The project encompasses the development of the biological aspects of the European Digital Twin Ocean, encompassing data flows, models and algorithms. DIGI4ECO aims to develop a digital twin-sustained 4D ecological monitoring system made by networks of robotic platforms, tailored for restoration efforts in fishery-depleted areas.
IDEATION
IDEATION (InlanD watErs in the digitAl Twin OceaN) aims to prepare the development of the digital twin of the inland waters (rivers, lakes, reservoirs, wetlands, snow, and ice) addressing activities to be developed and to make it integrated and interoperable with EDITO for a unified digital twin of ocean and waters (addressing the hydrosphere as a whole).
SURIMI, SEADOTs, ECOTWIN and SEADITO
These 4 projects aim to support the necessary actions and tool developments to appropriately include the social-ecological component of the European Digital Twin Ocean, including the links and interactions with other parts of the system (data, underlying models, ecosystem models, local twins, etc.), the necessary social-economic data considerations and the development of models and other applications to simulate and predict the social and economic part of marine and coastal systems linked to the environmental/ecological components, enabling the development of normative (what-if scenarios) and decision-support tools.
Iliad
Funded under the Green Deal call for research proposals, Iliad (INTEGRATED DigitaL Framework FOR Comprehensive MARITIME DATA AND INFORMATION SERVICES). ILIAD aims to establish an interoperable, data-intensive, and cost-effective Digital Twin of the Ocean (DTO).
Immerse
Immerse develops the next generation of numerical high resolution ocean circulation model based on the NEMO ocean model, to support developments of configurations to address regional climate change, interactions with coastal seas, better representation of the arctic, complexity of ocean mesoscales and sub-mesoscale, leveraging on enhanced digital high-performance computing.
Blue-Cloud 2026 and AquaINFRA
Blue-Cloud 2026 and AquaINFRA contribute to the goals of the EU Mission "Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030”, and of the European Digital Twin Ocean , by connecting data on the marine and coastal environment, on biodiversity, and on the water cycle with the ‘Blue Economy.
Blue-Cloud brings together leading European marine data infrastructures and networks (SeaDataNet, EurOBIS, Euro-ARGO, ICOS, SOCAT, ENA, EMODnet, CMEMS) and e-Infrastructures (EUDAT, D4Science, WEkEO DIAS), allowing researchers to combine, reuse, and share quality data across disciplines and countries.
AquaINFRA enables stakeholders to store, share, access, analyse and process research data and information from their own discipline, as well as across research infrastructures, disciplines, and national borders. In particular, it will address the needs of linking the marine and freshwater domains, under a ’single hydrosphere’.
EOSC Marine Thematic Node
Building on the results and key exploitable results of the Blue-Cloud 2026 project, and linking to developments of EDITO, the core infrastructure of the European Digital Twin Ocean, a new EOSC Marine thematic node will be set up and evolve as the component of EDITO that delivers FAIR open data and analytical services into EOSC, instrumental for deepening research of the ocean, European seas, coastal and inland waters, and for further supporting the co-construction of the European Digital Twin Ocean. The ambition is for the node to evolve from a candidate node towards becoming a fully operational node within the EOSC Federation, fit for exchanging EDITO services and data, as well as other third-party ones, with other EOSC nodes and beyond.
EU programmes and initiatives
Destination Earth
Destination Earth aims to develop a high precision digital model of the Earth to model, monitor and simulate natural phenomena and related human activities under a Green Deal implementation perspective.
Copernicus Marine Service
The Copernicus Marine Service provides free, regular and systematic authoritative information on the state of the Blue (physical), White (sea ice) and Green (biogeochemical) ocean, on a global and regional scale.
Copernicus DIAS – WeKEO
Copernicus data and information access service is a digital infrastructure with digital services that provides enhanced access to Sentinel data and Copernicus information products from all services into a digital environment co-located with cloud and HPC computing resources to facilitate the uptake of Copernicus.
European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet)
The European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) consists of more than 120 organisations aggregating, harmonising and sharing openly marine data, products and metadata. It makes these fragmented resources more available to public and private users which rely on quality-assured, standardised and harmonised marine data that are interoperable and free of restrictions on use.
International programmes and initiatives
DITTO
DITTO is a programme of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. The Mission of DITTO is to develop and share a common understanding of digital twins of the ocean, to establish best practices and standards, and advance a digital framework for DTOs to empower ocean professionals from all sectors around the world including scientific users, to effectively create their own digital twins.
G7 Future of the Seas an Oceans Initiative
G7 Future of the Seas an Oceans Initiative: The G7 FSOI initiative offers a mechanism to address the challenge of strengthening and sustaining ocean observations through the coordinated actions of the 7 leading nations in ocean observing plus the EU, who together fund more than half of global ocean observations. Enabling Digital Twin Ocean Capability is one of the priorities identified by the G7 FSOI group.
All-Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance
A coalition of Atlantic countries and stakeholders willing to strengthen cooperation in marine research and innovation issues along and across the Atlantic Ocean.
European Space Agency
ESA also has a number of activities supporting the development of digital twins for the Earth.
The EC-ESA Earth System Science initiative aims to establish an effective cooperation to jointly advance Earth System Science and its contribution to respond to the global challenges through flagship initiatives amongst which ocean health, polar and biodiversity.
Contact
RTD-HORIZON-EUROPE-MISSION-OCEANS
ec [dot] europa [dot] eu (RTD-HORIZON-EUROPE-MISSION-OCEANS[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)
Documents
Latest
The third Digital Ocean Forum brought together actors from different disciplines and sectors to co-design and co-create the European Digital Twin Ocean.
The Digital Ocean Forum 2023 brought together experts, stakeholders, researchers, and policymakers to discuss and shape the European Digital Twin of the Ocean