Thursday, May 28th, 2026
As part of EcoTwin's ongoing dialogue with regional stakeholders on digital environmental monitoring and climate resilience, Prof. Georgios Sylaios (Director of the Laboratory of Ecological Engineering and Technology at the Democritus University of Thrace, DUTH, and a member of the EcoTwin consortium) participated as a keynote speaker at the thematic event "Environment and Economy", organised by the Kavala Forest Directorate and the Kavala Forest Service on 15 May 2026 in Kavala, Greece.
The event brought together more than 100 participants, including representatives of regional authorities, environmental and forestry services, technical experts, and civil society organisations, for a day of interdisciplinary discussion on sustainable resource management.
Within EcoTwin's stakeholder engagement strategy, Prof. Sylaios delivered a keynote presentation addressing the growing stress on water resources and coastal ecosystems, the economic consequences of climate-driven scarcity, and the need for integrated, science-based management approaches that link terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments.
The presentation drew directly on EcoTwin's core scientific framework, combining Digital Twin technology, real-time environmental monitoring, and ecosystem modelling, to illustrate how modern research tools can produce the kind of practical intelligence that regional authorities and environmental managers need under climate uncertainty.
A central thread of the keynote was the role of Digital Twin technology, a core methodological element of EcoTwin, in shifting environmental monitoring from a retrospective, data-collection exercise into a real-time, predictive governance tool. By creating dynamic virtual representations of ecosystems that integrate satellite data, in-situ sensors, and hydrodynamic modelling, EcoTwin aims to equip environmental managers with the decision-support capacity to anticipate ecological tipping points rather than respond to them after the fact.
This framing connected closely with the event's audience of forestry and environmental professionals, many of whom face precisely the challenge of managing complex, multi-stressor landscapes with limited monitoring infrastructure and constrained institutional resources.