Open-Source Framework for Earth System Digital Twins

An Earth System Digital Twin (ESDT) is a dynamic, interactive, digital replica of the state and temporal evolution of Earth systems. It integrates multiple models along with observations, and connecting them with analysis, AI, and visualization tools. Together, these enable users to explore the current state of the Earth system, predict future conditions, and run hypothetical scenarios to understand how the system would evolve under various assumptions.Since 2021, NASA’s Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) program has invested in two ESDT efforts to tackle the impacts of our changing climate. The establishment of ESDT for flood and air quality enabled our teams to formalize the software framework. The open-source framework is called the Integrated Digital Earth Analysis System (IDEAS). By working with the Apache Science Data Analytics Platform (SDAP) community, IDEAS is now a subproject of SDAP. The paper presents the ongoing development of IDEAS and its current applications.