EOAgriTwin Advances Stakeholder Engagement: From Expert Dialogues
Following a successful project webinar that brought together more than 100 participants, the EOAgriTwin project shifted its focus toward targeted, in-person interactions to ground its technical developments in real-world user needs. Over the first half of 2026, the project team engaged directly with farmers, institutional representatives, and scientific peers across a series of consultation events. The insights and operational feedback gathered from these sessions have been instrumental in refining the Earth Observation-based digital twin for resilient agriculture.
User Insights from the Ground: The Anbauring Session
The direct practical engagement began with a specialized user feedback session held on February 18, 2026, at ZALF in Germany. This meeting involved ten key stakeholders, consisting of nine local farmers and a professional representative from the Brandenburg State Office for Rural Development, Agriculture and Land Consolidation. During the session, the participants provided critical operational insights regarding the user interface and specific system requirements.
The stakeholders expressed a strong need for higher spatial resolution data products and enhanced export functionalities, specifically requesting georeferenced data formats like GeoTIFFs that can seamlessly integrate with existing farm management software. Furthermore, the core of the discussion centered on predictive capabilities, with farmers emphasizing a strong preference for short-term, actionable in-season forecasts covering days or weeks rather than long-term climate projections. They noted that timely predictions regarding crop development, yield estimation, and immediate stress events are vital for daily decision-making, and they requested the integration of additional data layers such as biomass, current weather, soil conditions, and specific decision-support tools for fertilization and plant protection.
Bridging Research and Practice: The DWD Expert Meeting
To align these practical user requirements with established scientific frameworks and explore the needs of the wider community, the team participated in a high-level expert meeting hosted by the German Meteorological Service (DWD) in Braunschweig in April 2026. This cross-disciplinary forum brought together research institutions, federal ministries, and meteorological experts to foster collaboration and evaluate datasets.
During a dedicated session focused on agriculture, EOAgriTwin presented its virtual agricultural replica. Jonas Schreier from ZALF demonstrated satellite-based, field-level crop water use and heat stress assessments integrated with the Destination Earth framework, concluding with a live walkthrough of the prototype dashboard. The attending experts provided positive feedback regarding the system’s design and usability, which opened up further technical discussions on the utility of thermal satellite data and upcoming climate scenarios for future predictions.
International Scientific Outreach: EGU General Assembly
The project’s international outreach extended to the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly held in Vienna. Attracting more than 22,000 hybrid participants, this conference provided an ideal platform for dissemination. Dr. Jamina Bondad, who conducted a live demo and walkthrough of the EOAgriTwin’s modular architecture and user dashboard at the ESA booth.
She also delivered a scientific presentation detailing the integration of the process-based crop model MONICA with Earth Observation data, illustrating how the framework scales up drought stress detection and assesses stage-specific impacts under various irrigation and climate scenarios.
National Exchange: National Copernicus Forum
Further solidifying its connection to national strategies, the project actively contributed to the 2026 National Forum on Remote Sensing and Copernicus at ESOC in Darmstadt (April 28–30, 2026), which brought together approximately 400 attendees. The team focused its contributions on two key areas by actively participating in dedicated sessions that highlighted the project’s core competencies.
In the specialized session “Digital Twins in Earth Observation: Current Developments and Prospects,” Maximilian Schwarz from Remote Sensing Solutions GmbH provided an overview of the internal project workflows, highlighting process-based crop modeling, field-level crop water consumption, and heat stress assessments. His presentation emphasized the technical implementation within the Destination Earth framework, including the use of DeltaTwin and Insula Code, and featured a comprehensive demonstration of the dashboard.
Simultaneously, during the session “Copernicus for the Agriculture of the Future,” Jonas Schreier offered a deeper look into the heat stress assessment and crop water consumption components of the project. He highlighted the operational benefits of Copernicus’s Sentinel-3 mission, which generated significant interest among peers regarding the future application of the Land Surface Temperature Stress Degree Days methodology in broader regional contexts.
Looking Ahead: Upcoming In-Person Workshops
Building upon the momentum of these past events, the project is expanding its interactive approach to ensure broader regional coverage. Additional in-person workshops are currently being planned to take place at ZALF in Germany and at UCSC in Italy, allowing the team to gather deeper localized feedback from diverse agricultural environments.
Shape the Future: Try the Updated Prototype
Using the insights collected from both the scientific community and agricultural professionals so far, the EOAgriTwin team has successfully updated the prototype dashboard. Now everyone is invited to test these newly updated features and contribute to the ongoing development of the platform by sharing their experiences through the dedicated feedback questionnaire.
