Data and Enabling Technologies

We are developing the Digital Aotearoa Resilience Engine (DARE), a harmonised digital ecosystem based on data assimilation, ‘digital twins’ and ‘agentic AI’. DARE will leverage existing research, bring together emerging knowledge and data, and create a national collaboratory for resilience science.

The insights provided by these new tools will help Aotearoa New Zealand to mitigate disasters, adapt to climate change and associated hazards, and grow sustainably, so we don’t pass on unnecessary risk to future generations.

Digital twins bring together real-time information about buildings, infrastructure, people, and the environment. They can help researchers, government agencies, councils, and other organisations test different scenarios such as natural hazard risks, new developments, infrastructure changes, and emergency responses, before making decisions in the real world.

They also enable more timely and efficient science advice, because inputs can be easily tweaked to respond to emerging or anticipated changes in the real world.

Agentic AI can further enhance the usefulness of digital twins. Using the digital twins as their source, AI agents can evaluate options to reduce risk, and recommend the best response.

By using accurate data and simulations, digital twins can contribute to improved urban planning, infrastructure management, and disaster preparedness.

DARE will apply these powerful new research methods to support resilience decision-making in Aotearoa New Zealand.

• DataLake infrastructure: improving data compatibility to support other parts of the programme
• Hazard and risk digital twins: bringing information about all hazards together, and putting it to work in a seamless way
• Risk foundational model: underpinning training data for subsequent AI interrogation
• Model interrogation: asking the right questions and getting the right answers
• Knowledge sharing with key stakeholders

The programme brings together hazard and risk scientists, data modellers, computer science researchers, economists, social scientists and mātauranga Māori experts in interdisciplinary teams, to co-develop the essential building blocks of the DARE engine.

The programme is also deeply connected to other parts of the Platform, informed by resilience questions posed by the Platform’s Living with Risk, Better Resilience Decisions and Vision Mātauranga research teams, and by engineering and vulnerability information supplied by the Next Generation Risk Assessment theme.