A forward-looking project currently in the planning stages at KoK² is the Saarland Digital Water Twin. Public authorities at the state, county, and municipal levels, as well as those in disaster management and fire departments, and planning firms face a multitude of challenges. Given the constraints on financial, technical, and human resources, further digitization in water management is essential. A digital twin can also serve to inform the public, for example, through 3D visualizations of water level data.

This is because, for many issues in water management, geodata and its processing—for example, for designing retention measures, creating heavy rain and flood hazard maps, or in operational planning—constitute indispensable foundations. Currently, this data is requested and processed by the respective users at the relevant agencies for specific tasks. This process ties up resources for tasks that could largely be automated.

In the future, all of this data will be made available to the respective users via a standardized interface. For water management issues, automated calculations using the data should also be made possible immediately. Flood hazards should be communicated to citizens not only through water level data and 2D maps, but also in a 3D environment using an easy-to-understand visualization.