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Within the context of the Iliad project, the authors present technical challenges and the first results of having valid 3D scenes of (non-)existing offshore wind farms procedurally and automatically generated within either the Unreal or Unity game engine. The Iliad – Digital Twins of the Ocean project (EU Horizon 2020) aims to develop a ‘system of systems’ for creating cutting-edge digital twins of specific sea and ocean areas for diverse purposes related to their sustainable use and protection. One of the Iliad pilots addresses the topic of offshore floating wind farm construction or maintenance scenario testing and validation using the Unity 3D game engine. This work will speed up the development of these scenarios by procedurally and automatically creating the Unity 3D scene rather than manually (which is done at present). The main technical challenges concern the data-driven approach, in which a JSON configuration file drives the scene creation. The first results show a base wind farm running in Unreal 5.1. The final product will be able to handle environmental conditions, biological conditions, and specific human activities as input parameters.
Within the context of the Iliad project, the authors present early design mock-ups and resulting technical challenges for a 2D/3D/4D geo-data visualisation application focused on microparticle flows. The Iliad – Digital Twins of the Ocean project (EU Horizon 2020) aims to develop a ‘system of systems’ for creating cutting-edge digital twins of specific sea and ocean areas for diverse purposes related to their sustainable use and protection. One of the Iliad pilots addresses the topic of water quality monitoring by creating an application offering dynamic 2D and 3D visualisations of specifically identified microparticles, initially observed by buoys/sensors deployed at specific locations and whose subsequent flows are modelled by separate software. The main upcoming technical challenges concern the data-driven approach, where the application’s input data is completely obtained through external API-based services offering (near) real-time observed data from buoys/sensors and simulated data emanating from particle transport models
ILIAD builds on the assets resulting from two decades of investments in policies and infrastructures for the blue economy and aims at establishing an interoperable, data-intensive, and cost-effective Digital Twin of the Ocean (DTO). It capitalizes on the explosion of new data provided by many different earth sources, advanced computing infrastructures (cloud computing, HPC, Internet of Things, Big Data, social networking, and more) in an inclusive, virtual/augmented, and engaging fashion to address all Earth Data challenges. It will contribute towards a sustainable ocean economy as defined by the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Ocean, a hub for global, multi-stakeholder co-operation.