Digital Waters Flagship (DIWA) & Doctoral education pilot

Aims

The Digital Waters Flagship (DIWA) aims to become a top-tier water research cluster and innovation ecosystem that generates high-impact research outputs, input to policy development and innovations facilitating the next industrial water revolution. DIWA enables a transition towards the digital representation of real-world water systems (digital twins) to reproduce hydrological storages and their usage, with novel options for improved scenario analysis, planning and governance. The project is supported by doctoral education pilots, where over 80 doctors are educated.

DIWA enables a transition towards the digital representation of real-world water systems (digital twins) to reproduce hydrological storages and their usage, with novel options for improved scenario analysis, planning and governance. The digitalisation of water resources will improve the management and security of water supply, distribution and use, for example in the event of flooding or droughts. Digital water management will also help balance the objectives of industry, energy, agriculture and forestry in a sustainable way.

The solutions provided by the DIWA Flagship are urgently needed as water is a critical natural resource globally. Climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental pollution and water scarcity require additional investments that will increase the value of water. The water sector has business potential worth several billion euros and is expected to grow rapidly.

Cooperation is based nationally many networks such as the Freshwater Competence Centre partnership, Finnish Water Forum and Water Clusters in Finland like the Oulu “OIA” Water Ecosystem as well as many international networks like The Water4All Partnership. The partners work closely with public and private stakeholders.

The Syke is a key player in DIWA led by the University of Oulu (Professor: Björn Klöve), and it is part of the Flagship Programme of the Academy of Finland. The DIWA supports high-level research and the extensive economic and societal effectiveness that is derived from it.

Objectives

The DIWA Flagship will implement the goals of the Finnish international water strategy in practice. DIWA will integrate the critical knowledge and skills for advancing the Digital Earth concept that is evolving rapidly to play a strategic role in the Anthropocene epoch. DIWA researchers have already established Freshwater Competence Centre FWCC in 2020 that will provide DIWA with the essential infrastructures to develop digital solutions. DIWA is active in the 2 EU Destination Earth Initiative (DestinE 2023) and Water4all programme and its Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA 2023).

The DIWA established a Digital Twin that is an appropriate high-performance observation and computing infrastructure that hosts big data, models and user interface and provides services connecting input data at various scales, models and output to provide an improved “digital ecosystem”. The Digital twin is being developed under DIWAs’ research themes:

• RT1: Hydrosphere processes
• RT2: New observational systems
• RT3: Integrated analysis and modelling
• RT4: Digital services, platforms, and business applications
• RT5: Transformative water management

Mission

Our mission is to FORM, FACILITATE and FOSTER a new generation of the water sector (academia-business-public sector). We enable a transition towards the digital representation of real-world water systems (Digital Twin) to reproduce hydrological storages, their states, fluxes and processes, as well as ecosystem responses with novel options for improved scenario analysis, planning and governance. 

Projects

• Project: Digital waters flagship (DIWA) Home - digitalwaters.fi
• Project: PhD. pilots PhD Pilot - digitalwaters.fi (DIWA linked project 60-85 PhD.)
• Partnership: The Water4All Partnership (EU)  and Water security for the planet (Water4All)(Syke)
• Partnership: The Freshwater Competence Centre in Finland
• Network: Hydro-RDI-Network
• Network: Finnish Water Forum
• Infra – EU: AquaINFRA will develop data and services to support marine and freshwater scientists and stakeholders (aquainfra.eu)
• Infra – Finnish: Hydrological research infrastructure (HYDRO-RI-Platform)
• Service: When ice breaks – Freshwater Competence Centre
• Service: Data fusion, is a Integrated and scalable water quality data and services (Pro Quality Data)
• Research cooperation:
  Green and digital transition in river basin management (Green-Digi-Basin); 
  AI artificial intelligence in water sector (AI Vesi360); 
  Validation of High Resolution Water, Snow, and Ice (HR-WSI); 
  Artificial intelligence for automatized monitoring of water quality and vegetation biodiversity (AIWaterBio); 
  Machine vision in environment monitoring (EnVision); 
  National environment monitoring strategy & development program MONITOR 2020

Literature

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Blåfield, L., Gonzales-Inca, C., Alho, P., & Kasvi, E. (2025). Morphological Response to Climate-Induced Flood Event Variability in a Sub-Arctic River (doi.org). 

Takala, T., Lotsari, E., & Polvi, L. E. (2025). Surface flow and ice rafting velocities during freezing and thawing periods in Nordic Rivers. Journal of Hydrology, 649, 132447 (doi.org).

Kotamäki, N., Arhonditsis, G., Hjerppe, T., Hyytiäinen, K., Malve, O., Ovaskainen, O., Paloniitty, T., Similä, J., Soininen, N., Weigel, B., & Heiskanen, A.-S. (2024a). Strategies for integrating scientific evidence in water policy and law in the face.  of uncertainty. Science of The Total Environment, 931, 172855 (doi.org).

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Anna Autio, Pertti Ala-Aho, Pekka M. Rossi, Anna-Kaisa Ronkanen, Mika Aurela. (2023). Groundwater exfiltration pattern determination in the sub-arctic catchment using thermal imaging, stable water isotopes and fully-integrated groundwater-surface water modelling. Journal of Hydrology, Volume 626, Part B. (doi.org).

Anders Wörman, Ilias Pechlivanidis, Daniela Mewes, Joakim Riml & Cintia Bertacchi Uvo. (2023). Spatiotemporal management of solar, wind and hydropower across continental Europe. Communications engineering, volume 3. (doi.org).

Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda SRIA (2023) (water4all-partnership.eu)

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Jari Silander, Anton Von Schantz, Vesa Hölttä, Xiaoli Liu and Ella Rauth. (2022). 
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Petteri Alho, Hannu Marttila, Eliisa Lotsari, Harri Kaartinen, Cintia Uvo, Anna-Kaisa Ronkanen, Jari Silander. (2022). Uusi vesistötutkimuksen osaamiskeskus ottaa digiloikan suoraan syvään päähän. Vesitalous.

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