Digital Twin of the Ocean for Offshore Wind Energy

General Information

The DTO4OWE project brings together stakeholders from academia, industry, governmental agencies, and the public to address the challenges associated with the growing Offshore Wind Energy (OWE) sector. With more than 300 offshore wind farms scheduled for EU waters in the coming decade, questions arise about their potential impact on marine ecosystems. Conversely, the OWE sector requires relevant and high-quality marine data to plan its activities up to 50 years ahead in a changing climate. We will address these two contrasting but interconnected themes using digital twins of the oceans (DTOs).
The first objective is to develop fit-for-purpose sub-regional DTOs for assessing OWE impacts in the Baltic Sea and North Sea. Depending on the application, DTOs will encompass the physical-ecological environment and cover short-to-long term periods (up to 50 years), offering improved resolution and quality compared to state-of-the-art. The second objective involves creating a suite of tools for OWE sector-specific What-If Scenarios, including on-demand models, AI-based data-simulation fusion, forecasting, and downscaling tools which are integrated with Destination Earth Data Lake and EDITO_infra. In the long term, DTO4OWE aims to support the sustainable growth of the offshore wind energy sector by adopting digital twin technologies of the ocean environment. The project outcomes can be incorporated into OWE sector decision-making processes, which ultimately have large scale impacts on future OWE production. The developed DTO applications are upscalable for other sub-regions and applicable to monopile, gravity-based, and floating offshore wind farms.

Hereon contributes by advancing integrated modelling and data-driven approaches to capture interactions between ocean dynamics, ecosystems, and human activities in coastal and shelf seas. This work underpins the development of robust, science-based tools that inform co-designed What-If Scenarios, supporting evidence-based decision-making for sustainable offshore wind development and multi-use of marine space.

EU-Programme Acronym and Subprogramme Area	Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership (SBEP)
Project Type	SBEP Project
Contract Number	Contract number: SBEP2024-417
Co-ordinator	Tallinn University of Technology (EE)

Funding for the Project (€)	Funding for Hereon (€)
2.400.580	196.989 €

Contact Person at Hereon

Dr. Joanna Staneva, Institute of Coastal Systems - Analysis and Modeling, Hydrodynamics and Data Assimilation, KSD, Phone: +49 (0)4152 87-1804 E-mail contact

Participants

Institute of Oceanology, P A S, Sopot (PL), Danish Meteorological Institute (DK), Estonian Environment Agency (EE), Finnish Meteorological Institute (FI), Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NO), SINDBAD scarl (IT), Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SE), Tallinna Tehnikaulikool (EE), Université de Liège (BE), VATTENFALL AB (SE)

Last Update: 08. October 2025