Project description
Fighting fires with digital twins
Wildfires are one of the most destructive natural disasters. Their unpredictable behaviour and complex physical dynamics make them incredibly challenging to manage. Traditional methods often fall short in keeping up with their fast-moving nature, creating a need for more effective solutions. Digital twins, which combine virtual models and real-world simulations, have emerged as a promising tool to address this issue. With this in mind, the ERC-funded WildfireTwins project aims to create detailed 3D models of ecosystems, coupled with physical simulations, to develop real-time wildfire simulations. These digital twins will enable better decision-making for firefighting services. By using photorealistic imagery and AI-driven tools, the project will offer innovative solutions for combating this global threat.
Objective
Wildfires have a devastating impact on the environment, infrastructure, animals, and human lives. The complex physical dynamics paired with their unpredictable development makes wildfires a dangerous natural phenomenon that is difficult to counteract. Recently, digital twins have emerged as a concept that combines geometric modeling, image synthesis, and physical simulation with broad applications in predicting real world processes. This proposal aims to develop digital twins for wildfires – 3D models of ecosystems coupled with physical simulations – and to build AI-based tools for wildfire assessment. A wildfire twin with realistic physical simulations will have ground-breaking implications for firefighting services who will be able to use my framework as part of their decision making, resulting in an improved ability to combat wildfires, keep human lives safe and protect the environment. In contrast to existing wildfire simulations, a novel digital twin will provide real-time simulations of wildfires and complex 3D representations of ecosystems. By relying on state-of-the-art computer graphics technology, a digital twin will support generating photorealistic images and videos of wildfires. Synthetically generated data with high visual fidelity will profoundly accelerate the development and adoption of AI-based solutions for managing wildfires, as it addresses the bottleneck of capturing and curating expensive real-world training datasets. A digital twin that supports fast and accurate simulations of wildfires will have major impact on the analytical investigation conducted by the scientific community interested in understanding wildfires by accelerating the evaluation of hypotheses. Additionally, I plan to use the digital twin as a RobotGym – a virtual training environment for autonomous agents. A risk of this proposal is that a digital twin may not attain the required degree of realism – in which case it is still possible to identify options for higher quality.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
24118 Kiel
Germany
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.