POPSICLE project approval

The new research project POPSICLE has been approved and is now being developed to support Austria in adapting to the challenges of climate change. The project aims to strengthen the resilience of infrastructure, mobility and supply processes to increasing extreme weather events with the help of an innovative network of three digital twins (DTs).

By using this network, a variety of important Earth Observation (EO) data can be used for the first time to combine simulated flooding and inundation as well as simulation scenarios for socio-demographic processes. The basis is a digital twin developed by dwh GmbH together with TU Vienna and other research partners. Interfaces to the two other DTs, the flood simulator Scenarify from VRVis Zentrum für Virtual Reality und Visualisierung Forschungs-GmbH and the agent-based population model GEPOC from dwh GmbH, are being implemented and their features further developed. This allows complex scenarios to be generated that simulate the effects of climate change on infrastructures, networks and internal migration in Austria.

Three use cases with different time horizons and regional focuses serve to validate the implemented methods and show how climate change will influence these interactions in the coming decades, what effects climatic changes will have on population movements and what measures can promote sustainable planning.

POPSICLE marks an important step in researching the impact of climate change on our concrete living conditions and makes significant contributions to the sustainable development of the country through data-based forecasts and scenarios by providing decision-makers with well-founded tools that enable sustainable and efficient planning decisions under dramatically changing environmental conditions.

Link to the VRVis flood simulator: https://www.vrvis.at/produkte-loesungen/produkte-lizenzen/scenarify