Today, regions face major challenges. Climate change is putting increasing pressure on ecosystems and making extreme weather events (heatwaves, droughts, floods, etc.) more frequent and severe. It also heightens the need to protect natural resources and biodiversity. In Centre-Val de Loire, these challenges directly affect emblematic environments such as the Loire River, wetlands, forests and vast agricultural plains.
At the same time, digital transformation is opening up new opportunities to better understand, anticipate and manage these changes. Environmental data analysis, artificial intelligence and digital twins now make it possible to model and simulate how regions function, helping local authorities, resource managers and businesses make informed decisions.
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Raquel Pedrotti sur Unsplash
In response to these challenges, there is a growing need to develop tools that bring together scientific knowledge, field observations and digital data to support more sustainable management of natural resources.
This is the context in which the JUNON programme was created. By bringing together researchers, public authorities and socio-economic stakeholders, it aims to develop new environmental digital twins to better understand regional dynamics, anticipate future changes and support decision-making for the sustainable development of the Centre-Val de Loire region.