Support¶
This pilot digital twin is supported by the FFST as a UW CRESST grant. An NSF CSSI project has just been recommended for funding, and most of the support comes from academic units.
Earth System Science Nexus¶
We treat the critical zone — the shallow subsurface from weathered rock to the surface — as the dynamic skin of the Earth that regulates water infiltrating down to the water table, evaporating from soils, or transpiring and modulating lower-atmosphere thermodynamic and convective dynamics. Understanding the hydromechanical and hydrological structure and dynamics of soils is central to the severity of geohazards and to land–atmosphere coupling. We investigate and test hypotheses around the contributors to hazard severity (e.g., extreme meteorological events vs. soil conditions). Extreme weather events are themselves modulated by atmosphere–ocean coupling, which sets the cascade ocean → atmosphere → geohazards.
Use Case Events — Validations¶
2025 Western Washington Landslides and Floods
2001 Nisqually Earthquake
2025 Post-fire Debris Flow at Stehekin
2021 Skagit River Floods
Technological Development¶
1. DataHub¶
Hazard data is scattered across multiple sources and formats
Lack of standardized formats makes integration difficult
Limited access to high-quality, up-to-date hazard datasets
2. ModelHub¶
Traditional hazard models may not capture complex spatial and temporal patterns
Need for machine-learning approaches that handle multi-scale hazard processes
Difficulty validating models across hazard types and geographic regions
3. HazEvalHub¶
Develop a series of tasks and evaluation metrics for model evaluation
4. Research Software Agent¶
Developing a research-software-engineering agent to support multi-disciplinary science, in collaboration with the eScience Institute (Scientific Software Engineering Center) and supported by the Paros Center.