Developing a Digital Twin for Climate Resilience with Imagery & Data

Climate resilience building is increasingly top of mind for both government organizations and commercial businesses around the world. Extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and an urbanizing population all place stress on our natural and built environments, requiring us to develop innovative approaches to mitigating climate change and enhancing community resilience. 

Geospatial analysis is a critical tool for building climate resilience, as it enables us to visualize and understand current conditions while also modeling and predicting future scenarios. Many communities are leveraging this crucial insight by developing a 3D digital twin of infrastructure and land cover. Powered by high-resolution geospatial imagery and accurate, up-to-date vector layers, a digital twin enables organizations in the public and private sectors to analyze key issues related to flooding, urban heat, and more.

In our recent webinar, Ecopia AI (Ecopia) sits down with our partner Bluesky to discuss how high quality aerial imagery and artificial intelligence (AI)-based feature extraction are revolutionizing geospatial analysis, building a solid foundation for a digital twin and climate resilient future.

We’ve included the recording to this thought leadership session below in case you missed it, but also summarized some key highlights from this fascinating discussion to give you an idea of what was covered. Keep reading to see what geospatial experts from Ecopia and Bluesky predict for the future of digital twins and climate change, including real-world examples of how geospatial imagery and data are driving climate resilience strategies in Ireland, the UK, the US, and more communities across the globe.

Building a solid foundation for climate resilience

The session kicks off with an overview of Bluesky and Ecopia’s collaboration and the geospatial expertise each organization brings to the strategic partnership. Ralph Coleman, Chief Commercial Officer at Bluesky, introduces the company’s advanced aerial imagery capture capabilities, including examples of how their high-resolution products have enabled next generation map creation for their customers across a unique set of geographies. Building upon this introduction to the importance of high quality imagery, Ecopia’s Senior Director of Channel Partnerships, Abigail Coholic, describes how AI-based mapping is further empowering communities as they develop a geospatial foundation for a digital twin.

Abigail and Ralph discuss the ways imagery and vector data complement each other and are both needed for true climate-related insights. They emphasize how frequent high-resolution imagery capture enables AI-based mapping systems to extract accurate vector layers that represent the dynamically changing world, providing data with the level of precision needed for effective climate resilience strategy building. 

The discussion goes on to cover how high-precision imagery-derived data can be used to not only mitigate the effects of climate change, but also tackle the causes. Ralph walks through a few examples of work Bluesky has completed in the UK and Ireland, specifically around flood mapping, solar panel installation, and tree equity. He explains how Bluesky’s aerial imagery and additional data layers have helped organizations model current hazard risk, while also mitigating this risk in the future by increasing green infrastructure. 

Abigail also provides examples of how a geospatial digital twin is fundamental to climate resilience, citing Ecopia’s extensive coastal mapping work with the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). By using AI-based mapping techniques, Ecopia was able to increase the resolution of NOAA’s publicly available Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) data from 30m to 1m, classifying more than 3M square kilometers of imagery into raster layers representing impervious surfaces, high/low vegetation, and water bodies. This data is now in use by coastal communities across the US as they mitigate both the causes and effects of climate change to build a more resilient future.

Challenges in data sourcing & creation

After providing these examples of successful applications of geospatial imagery and data for climate resilience building, both Abigail and Ralph acknowledge the challenges many organizations face in sourcing and creating the right data. As imagery and data become more available, organizations have an overwhelming selection of providers to choose from, each with their own degrees of accuracy and freshness. Selecting the right imagery and data is critical to developing climate resilience strategies that actually have an impact, and stale or incorrect information can actually be detrimental to sustainability goals.

Change detection is essential for any climate-related workflow given how quickly the world changes, but many providers do not capture imagery or extract vectors frequently enough to maintain a digital source of truth. Similarly, manual digitization is extremely time-consuming and resource-intensive, adding another layer of complexity to the creation and maintenance of foundational land cover data. 

Data creation and sourcing challenges also vary by geography due to the hyper-localized characteristics of the natural and manmade worlds. In Europe, for example, row housing and curvilinear streets present unique data creation challenges. Additionally, geographies with thick tree canopy or other features that obstruct imagery can be difficult to digitize with the level of completeness required for climate analysis.

3D data creation is even more challenging for organizations, requiring adherence to topology rules in order to produce true digital representations of structures. Low quality 3D extractions result in different height layers protruding through each other (and even sometimes the ground), meaning end users need to clean the data before deriving any meaningful climate insights. 

Ralph and Abigail go on to explain how the increased adoption of geospatial technology has led to more and more companies entering the market to provide the imagery and data needed to build climate resilience. However, not all are able to overcome these challenges to be able to produce high quality images and data that decision-makers can rely on. Ecopia and Bluesky have been in the geospatial business for 10 and 20 years, respectively, and use this extensive experience to continue driving innovation and produce complete, accurate, and up-to-date geographic insights. 

Introducing EirMap: Ireland’s first 3D land cover map

To alleviate geospatial data sourcing and creation challenges in Ireland, Bluesky and Ecopia have partnered to develop the country’s first ever nationwide 3D land cover map: EirMap. This unprecedented map not only provides comprehensive land cover vector layers across Ireland’s 70,280 square kilometer area, but also includes detailed information on structures, absolute and relative heights, and unique component identification within complex structures. Bluesky’s frequent imagery capture and Ecopia’s unique ability to efficiently update vector layers ensure that EirMap is kept up-to-date as a digital source of truth for the Irish landscape. Take a look at the demo below to see what this data looks like in action.

Abigail and Ralph explain the many ways EirMap data is enabling government organizations and private companies alike to enhance their climate resilience strategies. For example, Ireland is extremely focused right now on green infrastructure development following the 2021 Climate Action Plan (CAP). Ireland’s CAP commits to net zero greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2050, with a 51% reduction by 2030. Also by 2030, the government aims to increase the proportion of renewable energy by up to 80%.  A public investment of €165B via the National Development plan is devoted to implementing green infrastructure to help reach these goals, and citizens are incentivized to make more sustainable decisions. Geospatial data is playing an integral role in reaching these goals by empowering decision-makers to identify suitable sites for solar energy, electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, and other renewable energy sources.

Contributing to CAP goals is just one way EirMap can be leveraged to enhance climate resilience, and we can’t wait to see how 3D land cover continues to drive innovation in Ireland. Be sure to check out the full session recording below to hear directly from Abigail and Ralph about the latest trends in geospatial data for climate resilience.

To learn more about how Ecopia’s global partner network is building the foundation of a digital twin, click here.