Charles Sturt and ASII partner on shared digital twin infrastructure for agriculture

Charles Sturt University and the Australasian Space Innovation Institute (ASII) have partnered to build national digital infrastructure for Australian agriculture. The work joins the university's Australian Agricultural Data Exchange, which supplies soil, water, weather and climate data, with ASII's National Digital Twin for Agriculture Program, which contributes satellite, geospatial analytics, AI and modelling expertise.

The aim is not a single digital twin but a foundation from which several twins, research tools and decision-support services can be built and reused. Applications include placing trial results in different environments, running virtual experiments before physical trials, and testing models across locations, seasons and future climates.

The first application is a A$465,000 project with Meat & Livestock Australia. One use case combines virtual fencing, livestock weight data, weather and satellite imagery for paddock selection near Wagga Wagga; the other predicts mimosa weed spread in the Northern Territory. Later use cases cover water availability and natural capital assessments.

Why it matters: Shared data-and-model infrastructure that combines Earth observation with agricultural datasets shows a reusable approach to digital twins, rather than one-off platforms. Practitioners elsewhere, including in Africa, can watch how it handles data reuse and scenario testing.