GAEA: Experiences and Lessons Learned from a Country-Scale Environmental Digital Twin
Andreas Kamilaris, Chirag Padubidri, Asfa Jamil, Arslan Amin, Indrajit Kalita, Jyoti Harti, Savvas Karatsiolis, Aytac Guley
TL;DR
The paper addresses the challenges of designing, deploying, and operating a country-scale environmental digital twin for Cyprus. It presents GAEA, an AI-enabled platform with 27 geoanalytical services that integrates satellite imagery, ground sensors, and geospatial analytics to support risk assessment and decision making across public and private sectors. Through extensive stakeholder engagement, it documents tangible benefits (e.g., improved AVMs, hazard visualization, early warnings) and actionable lessons on tailoring services, communicating risk, and maintaining data freshness. The work highlights practical implications for urban planning, finance, agriculture, forestry, and real estate, and outlines future directions including climate projections, automated validation, biodiversity monitoring, and AI-driven risk modeling to enhance resilience.
Abstract
This paper describes the experiences and lessons learned after the deployment of a country-scale environmental digital twin on the island of Cyprus for three years. This digital twin, called GAEA, contains 27 environmental geospatial services and is suitable for urban planners, policymakers, farmers, property owners, real-estate and forestry professionals, as well as insurance companies and banks that have properties in their portfolio. This paper demonstrates the power, potential, current and future challenges of geospatial analytics and environmental digital twins on a large scale.