TerraTwin: A Digital Twin-based Decision Intelligence Framework for Climate-Biodiversity Interactions

The escalating climate and biodiversity crises present unprecedented decision-making challenges due to their complex, interconnected effects across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Current scientific approaches are fragmented and fail to capture the systemic cascading and compound risks that threaten both natural ecosystems and human societies. Current Digital Twin and Decision Support Systems lack the integrated multi-dimensional (spatial, temporal, climate, and biodiversity) modeling capability needed to capture the complex atmosphere-land-sea interactions and provide holistic, policy-ready decision intelligence for managing interconnected climate-biodiversity risks at ecosystem scale. TerraTwin introduces a holistic seven-dimensional (7D) Digital Twin of Ecosystem (DTE) that integrates the 3D spatial dimensions plus time, ecological, socioeconomic and decisional factors, thus advancing Decision Intelligence. The DTE representation is sustained by multiparametric marine, terrestrial and atmospheric environmental and biological data through advanced AI/ML analytics, physics-restricted modelling, and blockchain-secured harmonisation strategies. The proposed unified 7D DTE framework provides transparent, AI-augmented decision-making capabilities across multiple stakeholder domains, coupled with explainable policy recommendations for complex climate-biodiversity trade-offs under uncertainty.