Simulating Plankton - getting it right in the era of Digital Twins of The Ocean

浮游生物本质上是漂浮在海洋中的有机体。它们的范围从微生物到水母和磷虾。浮游生物在行星生态圈的运行中发挥了关键作用(产生了我们呼吸的大气氧气的一半，也产生了大部分石灰岩和许多非煤炭化石燃料)。它们继续在气候变化事件、粮食可持续性(渔业)以及有害藻华和海流(海滩泡沫)事件中的当地社会层面发挥重要作用。该项目将为海洋科学的关键发展奠定基础，即为海洋的数字双胞胎配置浮游生物。数字双胞胎(DT)是真实系统的基于计算机的模拟；众所周知的例子是飞行模拟器和许多基于现实的视频游戏平台。DTS广泛应用于工程和商业领域，提供设计和测试平台。它们尤其适用于“如果……怎么办？”测试。然而，至关重要的是，最终用户要相信他们使用的平台确实描述了一个令真实系统中的专家满意的数字孪生兄弟。这项工作包括为联合王国和国际倡议在本十年内产生具有社会意义的海洋进程的数字孪生兄弟提供必要的基础，包括联合国海洋数字孪生兄弟(同上)倡议。例如，ditto背后的想法是看到DT平台的产生，这些平台通过合适的图形用户界面向公众免费提供，以支持教育、管理和决策。其中一些可能是在类似游戏的平台上，让公众了解浮游生物(例如，为什么他们当地的海滩因为有害的藻华或水母而被禁止进入)，而另一些平台将支持科学政策和管理。尽管浮游生物在海洋生态中至关重要，但当前一代计算机描述(模型)只提供了对真实生物的拙劣讽刺，非常不适合数字双胞胎应用。造成这种情况的原因包括缺乏合适的数据来直接支持建模，以及迄今为止建模人员与研究真实浮游生物的经验学家之间的互动很差。该项目将利用“专家证人验证”，这是一种类似于著名的人工智能图灵测试的方法，旨在产生足够真实的模型，使研究对象(浮游生物)的专家无法区分。该项目将与每个浮游生物组的专家合作，就不同类型浮游生物的计算机模型的行为方式达成共识，以便将它们视为“数字双胞胎”。在这个为期一年的项目中，将制作参考型材料(如核对表和样本响应模式)，以指导浮游生物模型的未来发展，特别是用于数字双胞胎应用，以确保对这些生物的描述符合该领域专家的期望。

Plankton are organisms that in essence drift in the oceans. They range from microbial organisms to jelly fish and krill. Plankton have played a key role in planetary ecosphere functioning (having produced half of the atmospheric oxygen that we breath, and also most of the limestone and much of the non-coal fossil fuels). They continue to play an important role in climate change events, food sustainability (fisheries), down to local societal levels in harmful algal blooms and sea-snot (beach foam) events. This project will provide the foundation for pivotal developments in marine science, namely configuring plankton for the digital twins of the oceans. Digital twins (DTs) are computer-based analogues for real systems; well-known examples are flight simulators and many reality-based video game platforms. DTs are heavily used in engineering and in business, providing design and testing platforms. They are especially useful for 'what-if?' testing. However, it is critical that the end user has trust that the platform they are using does indeed describe a digital twin that would be deemed satisfactory to experts in the real system.This work comprises essential underpinning for the UK and international initiatives to produce within this decade digital twins of oceanic processes of societal importance, including the United Nations Digital Twins of the Oceans (DITTO) initiative. The idea behind DITTO, for example, is to see the generation of DT platforms, freely available to the public with a suitable graphic-user-interface, to support education, management and decision making. Some of these may be within game-like platforms to engage and inform the public about plankton (why their local beach is out-of-bounds due to harmful algal bloom or jelly-fish, for example), while other platforms will support science policy and management.Despite the critical importance of plankton in marine ecology, the current generation of computer descriptions ('models') provides only a poor caricature of the real organisms that is quite unsuitable for digital twin applications. The reasons for this include a lack of suitable data to directly support modelling, and a hitherto poor interaction between modelers and those empiricists who study real plankton. The project will work by exploiting 'expert witness validation', an approach similar to that of the famous Turing test for artificial intelligence, which aims to produce models that are sufficiently realistic in their behaviour that experts in the subject (plankton) cannot tell the difference. The project will work with experts in each plankton group to reach a consensus on what computer models of different plankton types should behave like such that they could be considered as a 'digital twin'. The one-year project will see the production of reference-type materials (such as check-lists, and example response patterns) to guide future development of plankton models, specifically for digital twin applications to ensure that the description of these organisms accords with the expectations of experts in the field.