Coastal Zone Information Model: A comprehensive architecture for coastal digital twin by integrating data, models, and knowledge

The coastal zone represents a critical intersection of naturally ecological and socio-economic processes. The abundance of data, models, and knowledge derived from various sources in coastal zones facilitates us to integrate them to better understand the evolution of coastal environments. This paper proposes a comprehensive framework of Coastal Zone Information Model (CZIM) to integrate multi-domain coastal information. The core idea of CZIM is to integrate multi-discipline coastal data, models, and knowledge for standardized governance, so as to carry, express, and apply coastal information by the digital system approaching the coastal digital twin. The CZIM framework includes four aspects: coastal data governance, model integration, knowledge engineering, and system construction. We perform a detailed literature review to illustrate the demands and challenges related to those four. The components of each aspect and their interlinks are introduced subsequently, and the future challenges of constructing coastal digital twins relying on CZIM are discussed. CZIM aims to strengthen the ability to organize, manage and apply refined coastal information to support more efficient, scientific, and intelligent decision-making in response to gradually volatile forces from both human activities and natural events, now and in the future. This paper provides a valuable reference for the next generation of coastal digitization in the target of the coastal digital twin.