Cyprus Digital Twin

Cyprus Digital Twin (CyDT)

The Cyprus Digital Twin (CyDT) is a national, data-driven digital platform designed to support the resilience, management, and operation of Cyprus’ critical infrastructure systems. It provides a continuously evolving virtual representation of interconnected physical infrastructures, enabling stakeholders to understand system behavior, explore future scenarios, and assess risks arising from natural hazards, technological failures, or cascading disruptions.

CyDT was developed to address a key gap in existing digital twin initiatives: the lack of an integrated, scenario-driven, risk-based framework capable of capturing the complex interdependencies between power, water, transportation, telecommunications, and emergency response systems at country scale. By combining real-world data, advanced simulations, and decision-support workflows, CyDT moves beyond static models and dashboards to deliver actionable insight for both operational and strategic decision-making.

From Digital Models to a True Digital Twin

CyDT embodies the core principles of a true digital twin. It maintains a persistent connection between the physical world and its digital counterpart through continuous data ingestion from heterogeneous sources, including IoT sensors, national open data portals, geospatial repositories, and operational databases. These data streams are fused with physics-based, data-driven, and hybrid models that emulate the real behavior of infrastructure systems as they evolve over time.

This tight coupling allows CyDT not only to observe current conditions, but also to simulate alternative futures. Users can define parameterized what-if scenarios, assess their impacts, and evaluate response strategies before implementing them in reality. Importantly, the platform supports feedback loops, allowing human decisions informed by the digital twin to influence real-world operations, thereby closing the loop between analysis and action .

The Cyprus Digital Twin covers a wide range of interdependent Critical Infrastructure Systems (CIS). These include electric power transmission and distribution networks, drinking water and wastewater systems, intelligent transportation systems, telecommunication infrastructures, and the operational workflows of emergency responders. Environmental and demographic datasets further enrich the platform, enabling analyses that account for population exposure, terrain, land cover, and weather conditions.

What distinguishes CyDT is its explicit modeling of cross-sector interdependencies. Failures are not examined in isolation; instead, the platform captures how disruptions propagate across infrastructures, revealing cascading effects that can significantly amplify societal impact during extreme events.

Capabilities / Use Cases

Drinking Water Network Resilience to Contamination Events

Assessment of drinking water network resilience to contamination events focuses on scenarios arising from flooding, sewer overflows, or infrastructure failures. Contamination sources, pathogen characteristics, and affected network areas are defined, while spatiotemporal simulations capture the propagation of contaminants throughout the distribution system. By combining hydraulic and water-quality modeling with demographic information, population exposure is quantified and alternative response actions—such as valve closures or adjustments in disinfection strategies—are evaluated to support timely and informed decision-making during public health emergencies.

Power System Resilience to Wildfires

Analysis of power system resilience to wildfires examines the interaction between fire propagation, complex terrain, and electricity infrastructure. Wildfire evolution is simulated using high-resolution land cover data, physics-based fire behavior models, and terrain-aware wind fields, enabling the identification of power assets at imminent risk, including transmission lines and substations. The resulting analysis supports proactive mitigation strategies and reveals cascading impacts on dependent infrastructures, enhancing preparedness and operational resilience under extreme wildfire conditions.

Power–Telecommunications Resilience to Windstorms

Evaluation of the joint resilience of power and telecommunication infrastructures to windstorms considers the effects of extreme wind events on co-located assets. Synthetic storm scenarios with varying trajectories and intensities are combined with asset-specific fragility models to estimate failure probabilities over time. The spatiotemporal evolution of exposure and failures across both networks highlights how concurrent disruptions can impair emergency communications and prolong recovery, supporting coordinated resilience planning across infrastructure sectors.

Alert/Threshold-Based Monitoring

Monitoring and alerting functionality enables real-time detection of critical environmental and operational conditions across Cyprus. User-defined rules continuously evaluate incoming sensor data, such as wind speed or temperature, and trigger alerts when predefined thresholds are exceeded. Alerts are visualized spatially on the map and archived with temporal metadata, supporting rapid situational awareness, event tracking, and post-event analysis.

Localized Wind Modeling

Localized wind modeling is performed using WindNinja to downscale coarse meteorological data into high-resolution, terrain-aware wind fields. By accounting for topographic effects such as valley channeling and ridge acceleration, the tool provides accurate estimates of wind speed and direction at fine spatial scales. These outputs are essential for assessing wind-driven hazards, including wildfires and windstorm impacts on critical infrastructure.

Pipe Lengths Analysis for Water Networks

Analysis of water distribution infrastructure is supported through automated pipe length calculations within defined District Metered Areas. Spatial queries intersect network geometries with management zones to produce detailed statistics of pipe lengths categorized by diameter. This tool provides a data-driven foundation for infrastructure planning, maintenance prioritization, and resilience assessment of water networks.

Interactive Maps and Dataset Visualization

Visualization of heterogeneous datasets is enabled through interactive, domain-organized maps covering transportation, water, power, environment, and demographics. Static, semi-static, and real-time datasets are rendered as spatial layers with minimal latency, allowing users to explore patterns, relationships, and trends across the island. These maps provide contextual insight and serve as the entry point for scenario development and analytical workflows.