Project description
Addressing the socio-technical challenges of an ocean digital twin
Digital twin technology holds significant promise in developing solutions to mitigate the damage caused by climate change and facilitating the transition to greener alternatives. The European Commission is leveraging this technology to create a digital twin of the ocean (DTO), a highly accurate digital model aimed at facilitating studies, improving decision-making, and providing essential ocean data. The ERC-funded TwinPolitics project seeks to address concerns surrounding the socio-technical aspects of DTOs and their use in national and international contexts. The project aims to investigate current challenges related to development, access, security, legal considerations, and necessary regulations. Additionally, it will develop a methodological approach to address these challenges and ensure the effective use of DTOs.
Objective
In the light of time pressure, persisting data gaps, and challenges to the implementation of global sustainability goals for ocean protection, the European Commission is currently building a prototype digital twin of the ocean (DTO). The EU DTO is part of a larger set of substantial global and national efforts to develop highly accurate digital models of the ocean for ‘better decision-making’ and an emerging high-tech knowledge infrastructure that turns various types of ocean data into prediction tools for public and private actors with a stake in the transition towards sustainable ocean futures.
However, DTOs, although needed to advance ocean science and governance, are a political issue in themselves. Firstly, DTOs run the risk of perpetuating global inequalities because the capacities to develop, access, and use ocean data, information, and science are unequally distributed. Secondly, DTOs may create an array of legal and political uncertainties regarding data access, ownership, security, and sharing. Thirdly, DTOs should be embedded into a set of norms, rules, and values to prevent abuse and misuse in practice — a neglected aspect in the current ‘twin rush’.
TwinPolitics will overcome shortcomings in the study of DTOs by examining both the socio-technical making of DTOs for national scientific and political purposes and the politics of developing and using DTOs in an international setting. TwinPolitics will re-conceptualise digital twins as socio-technical relations operating under a specific set of institutional, political, and economic conditions and within a hybrid research, data, and observation environment. TwinPolitics will break new ground by developing a methodological approach that combines, on the one hand, qualitative and quantitative research on the practices, policies, and politics presiding over digital twins in national/regional contexts (EU, USA, China) with, on the other hand, the study of DTO use during multilateral negotiations.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- social sciencessociologygovernance
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesoceanography
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
1010 Wien
Austria