---
id: twins/edito
about:
  depiction: twins/edito.jpg
  label: European Digital Twin of the Ocean (EDITO)
  description: >-
    The European Commission's free public digital twin of the ocean, with ocean
    data, models and what-if scenario tools, run by Mercator Ocean International
    and the Flanders Marine Institute.
  tags:
    - ocean
    - Copernicus
    - what-if scenarios
    - open platform
    - Europe
twin:
  tier: 3
  place: European seas and the global ocean
  scale: ocean
  operational: pilot
  homepage: 'https://www.edito.eu/'
open:
  source: unknown
  data: open
  api: unknown
  participation: open
  note: >-
    Copernicus Marine and EMODnet data can be explored on the platform with no
    registration; registered users can publish data, services, processes and
    tutorials to its catalogues and request computing resources.
domains:
  - water
  - ecology
  - climate
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: European Digital Twin Ocean - Powered by EDITO - EDITO
      url: 'https://www.edito.eu/'
    - title: The European Digital Twin of the Ocean - Mercator Ocean International
      url: >-
        https://www.mercator-ocean.eu/ocean-intelligence/the-digital-twin-of-the-ocean/the-european-digital-twin-of-the-ocean/
    - title: Digital Twin Ocean
      url: 'https://digitaltwinocean.mercator-ocean.eu/'
    - title: >-
        European Digital Twin Ocean - Powered by EDITO - EDITO (Wayback Machine
        copy of 8 June 2026, with the descriptions of onboarded projects the
        live page no longer shows)
      url: 'https://web.archive.org/web/20260608133617/https://www.edito.eu/'
  created: '2026-10-18'
  reviewed: '2026-10-18'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
The European Commission launched the European Digital Twin of the Ocean in 2022 as part of the EU Mission "Restore Our Ocean and Waters".[^2] Its core is EDITO, led by Mercator Ocean International and the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) on behalf of the Commission.[^1,2] The 2022 design has three blocks: a data lake (one store for raw data of many kinds), a live model on high-performance computing, and a front-end simulation layer for user applications.[^3] EDITO is meant to be compatible with Destination Earth, the EU's digital twin of the Earth system.[^2,3]

Two Horizon Europe projects, EDITO-Infra and EDITO-Model Lab, built the first integrated version between 2022 and 2025.[^2] It combined data from the Copernicus Marine Service, EMODnet and other European observing systems.[^2] A first demonstration version was presented at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice in 2025.[^2] A second phase, from 2025 to 2028 under EU grant agreement 101227771, is meant to make it a fully operational system driven by its users.[^1,2]

The decision-support applications are framed as questions: a marine plastic tracker, a turtle drift tracker, a sargassum drift tracker, coastal erosion and nature-based solutions, tuna futures, seasonal chlorophyll forecasts, tide lines from earth observation, and ocean carbon.[^1] Another, GLONET, is an AI ocean forecasting system.[^1] Onboarded projects include:

- SEADITO, social-ecological models with case studies in the Baltic Sea, North Sea and Mediterranean[^4]
- SURIMI, nine socio-ecological fisheries models[^4]
- FOCCUS, coastal forecasting[^4]
- CoCliCo, an open-source web platform on coastal risk from sea-level rise[^4]
- ACCIBERG's OpenBerg, an iceberg-drift tool[^4]

EDITO is free and public.[^1] Copernicus Marine and EMODnet data can be explored in the viewer without signing up.[^1] A registered user can process data on demand, run predefined services and work in groups.[^1] Registered users can also publish data, services, processes and tutorials to the catalogues, and connect to EuroHPC, GitHub, GitLab or Kaggle.[^1] Computing resources are requested through a form and granted after review.[^1] The project also runs calls for financial support to third parties and onboards outside research projects.[^1]