Future Progress
The DTE Precursors act as the first step in realising the scientific and technical capacity of such an ambitious system as the Digital Twin Earth. In further development, the definition of the DTE itself must be an iterative process of the user requirements, assessment of capabilities, and the technical specifications.
Due to the scale involved in a fully integrated Food Systems Digital Twin, only a sub-set of the overall proposed architecture will be demonstrated in this project. However, a pre-defined potential Food Systems DTE architecture allows for the system to be organized into an overall DTE eco-system, including an initial identification of the models and data-sets required.
The collection of Digital Twins to be integrated into a complex, overarching DTE will continue to grow over time, but never be complete, since our understanding of Earth systems will never be fully complete. Hence the system needs to be flexible, standardized, and pragmatic. A key issue for a DTE is the overall complexity and scale, hence we believe that the DTE should be a federation of capabilities which are as open as possible and with an appropriate quality level.
As the project continues to expand and a roadmap towards Destination Earth is realised, this will further define the future development, which will be outlined in following updates.