Digital twin (DT) technology has expanded far beyond its industrial origins, increasingly finding application across environmental and territorial domains. This review provides a structured mapping of DT deployments at environmental and territorial scales over the period 2020–2025, examining 117 peer-reviewed publications (109 applied studies and 8 review articles) through a structured 16-parameter classification framework. The review traces three major conceptual shifts in the DT paradigm: from industrial assets to living entities, from discrete systems to Earth-scale representations, and from closed deterministic models to ecological and systemic frameworks, as reflected in the emergence of ecological digital twins (EcoDTs), environmental digital twins (EDTs), and territorial digital twin (TDT) definitions. The results reveal a clear growth trajectory in DT applications across themes, with urban systems as the most consolidated application domain, and progressive diversification into marine, coastal, forestry, river/lake, and Earth system applications from 2022 onward. Institutional actors dominate production in this space, aligned with European flagship initiatives such as Destination Earth (DestinE) and the European Digital Twin of the Ocean (EDITO). The findings position and expand the notion of territorial digital twins as an evolving paradigm, underscoring both the momentum generated by EU digital and environmental policy and the need for integrated tools to answer and respond to key environmental challenges.

Il momento giuridico nella costruzione del ‘modello’ totalitario: Ernst Fraenkel, Franz Neumann, Hannah Arendt

In this paper we discuss the use of evasion design, an overlooked expression from Superstudio, as a tool for shaping the future and understanding the Novacene Era. We propose evasion design as a tool to orient RTD (Research Through Design) activities for future exploration in educational and business environments, where a team not only needs to understand what a future scenario might be, but also needs to create a public discussion around its inherent values. Evasion design is here presented and explained in its differences from speculative design, but also in its sharing qualities and purposes in expanding the design practice. The result is a framework that combines both the potential of an alternative visual-based imagery and a guiding conceptual approach in rethinking the narrative of the future. By hybridizing codified methodologies of speculative design and the approach of evasion design, the paper shows the results of several workshops, conducted at institutions and universities, where the hybrid process is implemented through a specific methodology.

The contribution describes the activities of a teaching and research experience, named Alter_Azioni. It consists of three main parts. Firstly, it introduces the lagoon context as the reference framework used to experiment with a design local based to address the problems of the local territory and the environment. The paper moves on to discuss the design approach proposed to the students, contextualizing research and experiences based on the needs of the region and its inhabitants, through the exploration of a possible balance between the biological approach and the artifactual one. Furthermore, it summarizes some references about these issues, in order to gain a deeper insight into the chances or the pitfalls of this project. The second part provides an overview of the possible design range of concerns scenarios for a short-term future, focusing on the design projects developed and mapping them following three paths. Finally, in the third part, a look back points out what has been experienced as possible alternative scenarios.

Coastal zones and their connected freshwater and marine systems are among the environments most acutely exposed to accelerating climate hazards. European policy has responded by placing Digital Twin (DT) infrastructures at the centre of its climate adaptation and ocean governance agenda: Destination Earth for the Earth system, and the European Digital Twin of the Ocean (EDITO) for the marine and coastal domain. This scoping review defines and evaluates Hydro Digital Twins (HDTs), encompassing Digital Twins of the Ocean (DTOs), coastal-zone DTs, and freshwater-system DTs, as instruments for coastal management, water territory governance, and climate adaptation decision support. Conducted in accordance with PRISMA-ScR, the review screened 231 records (January 2020 to September 2025) and retained 21 studies, each coded against a thirteen-parameter framework organised on a governance axis and a data-centric axis. Governance objectives consistently outweigh technical motivations: risk reduction dominates (7/21 studies, 33%), followed by environmental monitoring (5/21 studies, 24%) and coastal management (4/21 studies, 19%). Remote sensing is used in 19/21 studies (90%) as the near-universal data backbone; artificial intelligence, coded as an analytical method rather than a data source, appears in 10/21 studies (48%) and concentrates in the River/Lakes domain (6/7 studies, 86%), which also holds three of the four predictive outputs; citizen science data, though a stated European policy priority, appears operationally in only 2/21 studies (10%). The modal maturity category is TRL 4–5 (6/21 studies, 29%), only one study reaches TRL 6, and 6/21 studies (29%) report no formal validation. The review clarifies the architectural distinction between HDTs and Web GIS and situates these findings within the European coastal governance agendas of Destination Earth and EDITO. All proportions above are properties of the reviewed corpus and are not extrapolated to the HDT field as a whole.