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Nvidia and Lockheed Martin to develop a digital twin of Earth for climate researchers

Nvidia and Lockheed Martin they find each other developing a digital twin of the earth for climate researchers, as well as several simulation tools that will use the digital twin in its entirety or some of its components. So when a US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather simulation tool due to launch in 2023 goes live, it will carry Nvidia’s digital twin technology and Lockheed Martin analytics options.

The digital twin, which according to The Register will be called Earth Observation Digital Twin (EODT), the first project of its kind undertaken by NOAA, will be a prototype that combines data from multiple sources to serve as a “one size fits all” tool for climate researchers. This has been assured Lynn Montgomery, Senior Researcher at Lockheed Martin Space.

Montgomery has noted that his collaboration with Nvidia «will provide NOAA with a timely, global view of its vast data sets«. On the other hand, according to Nvidia, the project builds on several initiatives he has worked on so far. Among them Earth-2, a simulation tool of the omniverse at the planetary level; as well as various wildfire analysis tools and Nvidia’s Modulus Artificial Intelligence framework.

The company has indicated that when EODT connects to the Internet, which is scheduled to happen in September 2023, it will begin demonstrating the system’s ability to visualize sea surface temperatures. EODT will also allow visualization of data, among which are «temperature and humidity profiles, sea surface temperatures, ocean ice concentrations, and solar wind data«.

The data will be collected with Lockheed’s OpenRosetta3D software, which entities such as NASA, among others, use for large-scale image analysis and geospatial modeling. In addition, AWS GPU computing instances will be used for the project, as well as local DGX from Nvidia, and OVX servers.

Nvidia, for its part, will develop one-way connectors that allow OpenRosetta 3D dataset captures to be imported into Nvidia Omniverse Nucleus so that they can be used as Universal Scene Descriptors (USD), a file format that Nvidia’s directive is addressed as “the 3D HTML«. That data will be presented in 3D, thanks to Lockheed’s Agatha 3D visualization software.

Peter Messmer, Head of HPC Development Technology Group at Nvidiahas stressed that EODT «will have a fusion of sensor, architectural and inferred data, combined with various visualization capabilities deployed in the cloud and on various workstations«.

The system is being developed for NOAA researchers, and the group hopes it can help reduce the time it takes to develop complex weather visualizations from several TB of data from the hours it takes today to just a few minutes. Although initially focused on weather data visualization, Nvidia has stated that it could be used for other applications in the future as well. EODT «help NOAA researchers, and sometimes elsewhere, make decisions faster, based on the latest available data«.

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