1. MobyGIS S.r.l.
Registered office: via Guardini 24, 38122 Trento (Italy) |
+39.0461.425806 | info@waterjade.com | www.waterjade.com
The new technological frontier in
water resources management: the
digital Twin of the catchment area

2. Who we are
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com

3. Water in industrial applications
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
How much
WATER is there
And when will it
become available?
And how
will it be?

4. State of the art
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
Hydropower Water utilities
historical data simplified models
measurement
campaigns

5. Climate change
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
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6. Impacts
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
Service
interruption
Overflow
Damages Penalties

7. Water cycle
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
snow
evapo-transpiration
infiltration
interaction with
hydraulic works
precipitation

8. Customer requirements
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
Site-specific Accuracy Runoff
decomposition
Globally
scalable
Real time
Granularity
FLEXIBILITY
TRACEABILITY
REPRODUCIBILITY

9. Road map
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
snow
evapo-transpiration
infiltration
interaction with
hydraulic works
precipitation
2x
accuracy
Global
reach
Whatever
climate

10. The Problem: model complex system
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
Can we calibrate the model of this
complex system?
Can we optimize directly the level
instead of water discharge?
We need to couple hydrological and
hydraulic models.

11. Digital Twin, what is it?
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
A Digital Twin is a digital replica of an object,
process or system that exists in the physical
world, with a connection between the physical
object and its virtual representation.
Digital twins can be used to better understand the
past, be used for real-time monitoring, remote
control of systems and help predict or prevent
future changes, through scenario-testing and
strategic planning.
What can we do with it?
What is it?

12. Digital Twin components
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
Reality Digital
Sensors
Actuators
IT infrastructure
Data Models
Modeling
framework

13. Data sources
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
● Different sources:
○ in-situ measurement
○ derived from model (NWP)
○ Earth Observation
● Different license:
○ proprietary
○ open data
● Different exchange protocol:
○ Rest API
○ ftp/sftp/scp
○ e-mail

14. Data structures
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
● Different data structures:
○ timeseries
○ raster
○ data cubes
○ unstructured
● Different format (NetCDF, grib, csv,
SMET, Geotiff, …)
● Different Metadata Standard (CF
Metadata Conventions)
● Different quality: raw or processed

15. Data management
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com

16. Data management
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
ElasticSearch
Open-data hydrometers
Observations
Open-data meteo stations
Meteo reanalysis
Meteo forecast - GFS
https://
https://
https://
FTP
DB selector
https://
Fetch and archive

17. Data management
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
DB client
DB client
DAO
DAO
DAO
Rest
API
Preprocessing:
● cleansing
● aggregate
● transform
Downscaling
Ensemble Quantile
Seasonal forecast

18. Models
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
Physical models
● simulate physics process with different level of
complexity
● require deep domain knowledge
● need initial conditions and boundary conditions
● mass balance is preserved implicitly
● require less calibration data
● can be used to model other operational
problems
● can be used to estimate unmeasured variables
Statistical models
● does not require deep domain knowledge
about physics
● can make use of all available sensor data
● low computational cost once trained
● not suitable with limited historic data
● problem specific and limited operational
experience
● re-training required when operation condition
changes

19. Physical Models for hydrology
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
● a simple calibration is
needed
● no computational costs
● not very accurate
Lumped
● more complex calibration is
needed
● little computational costs
● can be very accurate
● it does not require calibration
● require a very good
knowledge of the catchment
● large computational costs
● accurate for snow, but not for
discharge
● they are often monolithic
Distributed
Semi-distributed

20. Generally used by us for:
● flood frequency analysis (Generalized Extreme
Value distribution (GEV)
● weather generator implementation (synthetic
precipitation time series)
● …
Statistical models
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
Classical models
Thanks to their versatility, they are well suited for
estimating the discharge or for forecasting the
management of reservoirs and much more.
● Ridge Regression, Lasso Regression,
Elastic-Net
● Artificial Neural Network (ANN)
● Recurrent Neural Network (RNN)
● Long Short Term Memory (LSTM)
● Facebook Prophet
● Computer Vision
● …
Machine learning models

21. Runoff model
Runoff/routing
Model
Linear
reservoir
Linear
reservoir
Linear
reservoir
Linear
reservoir
Infiltration
model
Discharge
Quick
Slow
Rain
Melting
ET
The runoff model can
be implemented as a
composition of other
components:
● infiltration
model;
● linear reservoir.
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
Moore (1985)

22. Geomorphological response
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
Direct
Basin
Connected
Basin
HRU
HRU
HRU
HRU
HRU
HRU
HRU
HRU HRU
HRU
HRU
HRU
HRU
HRU
HRU
Glacier
Reservoir
Pipe Intake

23. Next steps
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
Data
management
Digital Twin
Front-end
interface

24. Next steps
by MobyGIS S.r.l. | www.waterjade.com
Are you a
Computer scientist
or a
Data scientist?
Send us your CV to
careers@waterjade.com

25. 25
MobyGIS S.r.l.
Registered office: via Guardini 24, 38122 Trento (Italy) |
+39.0461.425806 | info@waterjade.com | www.waterjade.com
Awards:
THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION
The Digital Twin of
the catchment