Speaker
Description
DIWA (Digital Waters) Flagship is Finland’s national flagship programme for water research and digitalization, bringing together the University of Oulu, University of Turku, Aalto University, Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Finnish Geospatial Research Institute (FGI), and Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI). Through its source-to-sea and critical-zone research framework, DIWA integrates hydrology, environmental monitoring, modelling, data science, and digital twins to address challenges arising from climate and land-use change.
Central to DIWA are nine watershed Supersites spanning 60° to 70°N, which provide long-term observations, novel sensors, and experimental platforms for studying hydrological, biogeochemical, and ecosystem processes from headwaters to coastal waters. These infrastructures support the development and validation of advanced models, digital twins, and monitoring technologies. Combining Supersite observations with FAIR data practices, the DIWA DataLab integrates over 90 million datasets and enables reproducible, high-performance analyses and decision support. During its first two years of operation, DIWA produced more than 600 scientific publications and generated 97 policy citations, while expanding research capacity through a doctoral education programme with 60 PhD candidates and more than 25 postdoctoral researchers. Through collaboration with ministries, regional authorities, water utilities, NGOs, research organisations, and 38 companies, DIWA co-develops digital solutions for flood and drought risk management, eutrophication control, watershed restoration, and water governance, creating measurable scientific, societal, and economic impact across Finland.