What if Data story telling was the corner stone for environmental digital twins?

Environmental digital twins face significant interdisciplinary challenges in their development and operation, particularly in managing complex environmental data and facilitating effective communication among diverse stakeholders. While these virtual representations of environmental systems offer powerful capabilities for monitoring and decision-making, they often struggle to bridge the communication gap between technical experts, decision-makers, and end-users.

Data storytelling is the practice of narrating messages derived from data to address specific needs and visually communicating these messages to an audience in an ordered manner that is easily understandable. Interestingly, digital twins share a similar objective: both aim to simplify and communicate complex data through intuitive and meaningful narratives.

Building on this shared characteristic, we propose an approach that adapts data storytelling techniques to the creation of digital twins. This abstract focuses on how data storytelling can enhance the creation and communication of digital twin data through visual formats tailored to specific audiences, addressing their unique needs to support monitoring, decision-making, and actionable insights.

This innovative integration of data storytelling and environmental digital twins establishes a comprehensive approach to address three key challenges:

• Documenting and structuring the development process  from data to communication to incorporate stakeholder needs and communication requirements from the outset.
• Facilitating collaboration among interdisciplinary teams through shared narrative frameworks.
• Ensuring environmental insights are effectively translated into actionable knowledge.

We present a methodology that leverages data storytelling techniques to enhance the accessibility and impact of environmental digital twins, ultimately improving their effectiveness in environmental monitoring, decision-making, and stakeholder engagement.