Saving natural assets through digital twins
With time running out to prevent the climate and biodiversity crises from permanently altering Earth’s natural systems, we need serious solutions. Technology and digital twins have the potential to facilitate a smarter and more resilient approach. Whilst the effects of climate breakdown are starting to be seen around the world, there is an elephant in the room, another crisis which urgently needs attention — the biodiversity crisis. Since 1500, it is estimated that 30 percent of the world’s species have been lost or threatened with extinction. Significant loss of biodiversity continues to occur at an alarming rate and will have severe consequences for our own survival.
Whilst one crisis alone is bad enough, the combined impact of the climate and biodiversity crises has the potential to be catastrophic for the planet and human civilization. In fact, it is predicted that on our current trajectory, approximately 40 percent of species will be extinct by the end of the century, causing ecosystems to collapse, and taking down societies and economies around the world with it.
The reasons for biodiversity loss are largely due to natural habitat making way for human infrastructure and the demand for natural resources, such as wood, water, and mined or extracted materials.
As a global society, we are currently using 73 percent more natural resources than the planet can produce each year and as biodiversity underpins many of the services that nature provides, we risk destroying the underlying systems to the point of no return. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has valued the goods and services provided by ecosystems at US$33 trillion, annually — that, and the inspirational species the world’s ecosystems support, are what’s at stake.
To prevent biodiversity collapse we must gain significant investment in nature. With the ecosystem services they provide, nature-based solutions (NbS) are already becoming the go-to solution for many of the problems that climate breakdown will bring, such as intense flooding, coastal erosion and higher temperatures.
But questions are being raised about where investment can be most effective. That’s where technology comes in. The use of digital twins, AI and machine learning, has the potential to identify the best locations to focus habitat protection and restoration, so that we can make our transition to nature recovery as efficient as possible.
How digital twins can unlock solutions to protect and enhance nature
Whilst digital twins of cities and built infrastructure are becoming commonplace, the potential to create virtual replicas of natural landscapes such as green and blue infrastructure, to improve strategic decisions, reduce risk and enhance nature, is profound. Digital twins of natural and semi-natural landscapes, replicate the three-dimensional structure of habitats, such as forests, grasslands, coral reefs or even green roofs and walls. There are a wide range of benefits of using digital twins, which include:
Climate-risk simulations: Digital twins provide the perfect platform for visualizing environmental models. Want to know how mangrove restoration could protect the shoreline from rising sea levels or coastal erosion? By playing around with parameters built into the twin, you can observe how NbS would provide enhancements, exactly how you would see it happen in the real world. This approach can be applied to all sorts of circumstances and allows you to model climate impacts, such as flooding and storm events, urban heat island effects, drought impacts on natural water sources, habitat fragmentation and air pollution.
Site optioneering for NbS: Where is the best location for a particular NbS and how would it change the look of the landscape? This is a question that is normally posed by those investing in NbS and one which can be answered using a natural environment digital twin. For example, we may be interested in understanding where a new wetland would best prevent flooding whilst simultaneously providing habitat for migratory wetland birds. The digital twin allows you to simulate multiple environmental parameters and allow you to select the best location using data.
Better communication: Nature is complex and can be a difficult thing to communicate, especially to those who know little about how nature works. Digital twins allow everyone to easily understand how NbS can positively influence an environment and how loss of nature can have the reverse effect.
Internet of Nature (IoN): Whilst the emphasis of digital twins to date has been on built environment data, like the density of traffic, real-time environmental data can also be used to assess and monitor ecosystem services and habitat health. The bridging of the IoT with nature, known as the IoN, provides ‘ecosystem intelligence’ and has a wide range of applications, including use of biosensors to monitor vegetation health and functioning, sensor networks to monitor stormwater, urban heat islands and air pollution uptake, and use of virtual reality for greenspace interpretations.
Natural capital: AECOM’s BioInstinct is a tool that can quickly assess and quantify the monetary value habitats within a landscape provide using a combination of remote sensing technology, artificial intelligence and existing environmental data sets, like soil maps. By assessing the natural capital of a landscape and visualizing it within a digital twin, we can very quickly determine what the best locations of the land are to focus on in terms of investment, restoration or enhancement. The Natural Capital Laboratory highlights how this can be done.
Digital twins are already being used on a number of complex projects, including a 3D Digital Map of Hong Kong. Layers representing vegetation such as street trees, forests and wetlands are present within the twin. When used in combination with simulated high rainfall events, we can see in real-time how the existing NbS influence a flood event. Turn the vegetated layers off and it is clear how catastrophic the flood event would be to residential and commercial areas of the city. With this scenario, it is easy to see how manipulating the parameters within the digital twin can help make efficient and more-informed strategic and design decisions.
No two cities are the same, and with that in mind, no one solution is necessarily a good fit for every city. As the climate and biodiversity crises take hold of our world, climatic conditions will become more extreme and storm events will become more frequent. These untold events will put severe pressure on the places we live.
With record temperatures being broken around the world year-on- year and flash flooding already becoming more frequent, there is a real need to use nature for our own benefit. With time running out, we need accurate, well-informed solutions, now. That is where front ending the design process using technology can really help.
Mitigating the negative impacts of climate change can work hand- in-hand with nature recovery. As we combat the ill effects of the environmental crises, a holistic design approach, which allows us to understand and visualize the benefits and value that nature provides to our cities, is essential for our cities and livelihoods to sustain.