Ambitious road maps and an accelerated transition to a climate-neutral economy are the key to building market leadership in green technologies. With the ECTO dashboard, the FORWIT identifies green products that are not yet produced to a significant extent and that represent a special future opportunity for Austria as a research and business location in international competition.
The ECTO dashboard uses a big data approach to create a knowledge-based product space model for Austria and to identify transformation opportunities in the Tech4Green area. It shows the potential of green products or Product groups for which Austria already has the necessary manufacturing capabilities and which therefore offer concrete opportunities for accelerated green transformation and international market leadership. In addition, the global market size for these products and the dependence on critical primary raw materials are analysed.
According to the theory of economic complexity, each country has skills that enable it to produce different products. These skills include, for example, the physical conditions of the country, qualified workers, a stable legal system and the available technology landscape. Based on the recognition that some products require similar and some require completely different technological and societal conditions, a so-called “product space” can be created.
It has been empirically proven that the product space can predict the future development of a country’s product portfolio, for example market entry or growth in certain goods. Based on the proximity to currently produced goods we can evaluate the potential to manufacture a currently not produced commodity.
Besides exploring the Product Space, this dashboard allows the user to assess the additional demand to the workforce, if Austria starts producing Green Products. The user can configure an scenario by clicking the “add to workforce calculator” button in the product profile card, or by searching for the desired product(s) in the workforce calculator.
The workforce calculator gives an estimate how many workers will be needed in which industries, which occupations they will work in, and what field and level of education they will have.
The product profiles present valuable information for all product groups. The exact product description corresponds to the categorizations of the HS code and the ex-out of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In addition, the application of the products is explained and the required critical materials are listed.
In a production map of Austria, the federal states are evaluated and ranked in terms of their production performance. Also, all subcategories of the respective product group are identified and non-green products associated with it are linked.
Alexandra Mazak-Huemer
ECTO project manager
If you have any questions about the ECTO dashboard or need more information, please contact Alexandra Mazak-Huemer by e-mail at amh@forwit.at or by phone at +43 1 713 14 14 12.
The ECTO dashboard of the FORWIT is the result of a study prepared by the Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSH) on behalf of the former RFTE. In order to make the information potential and complexity of the subject of study usable, the ECTO dashboard was developed and expanded to include the workforce calculator in 2023. The data set “International Trade Data (HS, 92)” of the Growth Lab of Harvard University is used for the ECTO dashboard.
Together with the STI Monitor, the ECTO dashboard forms the central instrument with which the FORWIT provides actors of the Austrian FTI system and beyond reliable, data-based evidence for strategic and systemically effective decisions.