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Short Abstract

This contribution presents a participatory approach to co-design Digital Twins for water management and climate resilience, a growing field still dominated by technical expertise, where local knowledges and lived experiences are often overlooked, underrepresented, and distant from decision-making.

Abstract

The integration of diverse forms of knowledge beyond quantitative and technical data remains limited in many scientific domains, where local knowledges and lived experiences are often overlooked, underrepresented, and kept distant from formal decision-making processes. This knowledge integration gap reduces opportunities to capture context-specific insights that are crucial for designing effective, equitable and socially owned climate resilient strategies. Yet, stakeholder participation has been shown to offer multiple benefits, including enhancing legitimacy and fairness, and building trust and transparency, leading to more robust, innovative and widely supported solutions. This contribution explores how such participatory and collaborative approaches can be applied to the rapidly growing field of Digital Twins, which to date remains largely dominated by technical expertise. We argue that bridging the often abstract, system-oriented concept of Digital Twins with local, place- and practice-based knowledge is essential for effective science–policy integration.

Drawing on the EU-funded AQUA project, this contribution introduces a case study that experiments a co-design approach to Digital Twins for water management and climate resilience across the Adriatic–Ionian Region. Over the next two years, the project will engage a broad range of stakeholders, including local and regional water utilities, research centres, civil society organisations, private companies, and local authorities, across diverse geographical and socio-economic contexts. By embedding local and cross-sectoral knowledge into the development of Digital Twins, the research aims to foster inclusive, transdisciplinary, and context-sensitive tools that support more resilient and adaptive water governance.