Our News

Last month occured ESA’s Living Planet Symposium 2025 (23-27 June) in Vienna, Austria. The opportunity to present outcomes of our ESA Digital Twin Hydr’Avatar project to a broad audience, from researchers to ESA representatives, and also to meet again in person colleagues involved in the project.

Our project was presented in 3 different occasions:

• A 2 minutes pitch in the ESA Hydrology Science Cluster session, alongside with other hydro-related projects;
• A technical presentation of first scientific outcomes in ESA’s digital-twin components session, during which we showcased the very first insights on model deployments and related advances in the use of Earth Observation in hydrologic and hydraulic fields;
• A presentation in the invited session that showcased demonstrations of simulations and their contribution to flood analysis.

All sessions were really inspiring and permitted us to evidence the nice progression of the project and to highlight the consequent contributions that EO datasets can bring in the field of hydrology and hydraulics. The symposium was also the opportunity to foresee potential collaboration and exchanges with other projects and thematics. We are thankfull to the organizers for organizing this meeting and to the colleagues researchers for the insightfull discussions that took place during the symposium, and look forward to continuing the discussions.

We are happy to announce that the Digital Twin Hydrology “Hydr’Avatar” project will present its first results during the upcoming ESA Living Planet Symposium (23-27 June, Vienna, Austria). You may attend session D.01.04 on Tuesday 24^th of June at 2pm, Room Hall K1 to hear more about our progress and see a demonstration of our interactive data visualisation tool, or come and visit members of our consortium anytime during the conference. The demonstration will feature some results from the modelling experiments that were made during the first months of the project.

Our presentation will highlight:

• Development of advance EO products
• Integration of EO products from a range of sensors
• Innovative use of AI and ML
• Advanced data assimilation
• Development of tools to address needs of users and stakeholders.
• Design of system architecture
• Creation of data analysis and visualization tools

Early february, our team participated to the ESA Digital Twin Earth Components: Open Science Meeting, together with several European researchers, project leaders and ESA’s representatives. This event offers a networking platform and invites scientists, research institutions, policymakers, innovators, industry representatives, ESA DTE activities, and European and national DT initiatives and projects to share their experiences and help shape the future of Earth Observation (EO) in the context of Digital Twins in Europe.

In this context, we presented the great scientific and tehcnical challenges faced by the community and had the opportunity to interact with multi-disciplinary teams. This event also permitted to strenghten the link with the other DTC projects.

We are thankfull to ESA for promoting this kind of event, crucial for strong scientific interactions and knowledge sharing, as for a better coordination and identification of potential synergies between different projects.

Hydr’Avatar’s Contribution to ESA’s Hydrology Cluster and Hydrological Sciences: Frascati Meeting

From November 25 to 27, 2024, the Hydrology Cluster Meeting in Frascati, Italy, brought together experts in hydrology and Earth observation. The event facilitated collaboration between scientific and operational communities and projects, while supporting society to address global hydrological challenges. The Hydr’Avatar team actively participated, contributing to discussions on how satellite data and hydrological modelling can contribute to improved knowledge and management. We presented the scientifc goals of Hydr’Avatar and highlighted the strong potential of the methods we intend to leverage for water resources management and flood forecasting, among others.

We believe the Hydrology Science Cluster and other interactions between projects and consortiums will lead to improved capacity to face challenges related to the use of EO data for society in a context of climate change. We look forward for such interactions.