- University of Vienna, Political Science, Vienna, Austria (carolin.hirt@univie.ac.at)
The European Union’s Digital Twin of the Ocean (EU DTO) represents a novel initiative to integrate advanced digital technologies with ocean governance, aiming to model and predict marine ecosystems to support policy decisions and sustainable management. As a complex socio-technical infrastructure, the development of the EU DTO involves coordination across a vast geographic area, integrating diverse technologies, standards, and stakeholders with varying resources and interests. This paper therefore analyzes the EU DTO as a Socio-Technical Network (STN) comprising three core components: the physical oceanic entity, the digital technical artifact, and the intricate socio-technical relationships binding them. It pursues the following research questions: (1) What are the primary social actors and technical components comprising the EU DTO infrastructure? and (2) What Social-Social, Technical-Technical, and Socio-Technical relations define this infrastructure?. Using a mixed methods approach involving interview data, stakeholder surveys, and desk research, it empirically maps out the multi-layered socio-technical relationships within the DTO’s infrastructure. By modelling and analyzing the dynamic interplay between social actors and technical components, it identifies socio-technical barriers: firstly, technical barriers (e.g., lack of standardized data), secondly, social barriers (e.g., unequal resources), and thirdly, socio-technical barriers (e.g., unclear data transfer responsibilities). Combining this approach with a political ecology (PE) lens reveals the power dynamics and socio-environmental challenges of the EU DTO, including data accessibility disparities, and highlights how broader power relations, institutional interests, and political agendas shape its development and implementation.
How to cite: Hirt, C. and Vadrot, A.: Investigating and Modeling the Making of the EU Digital Twin of the Ocean, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-19807, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-19807, 2025.