Contributions published at Informatics and Sustainability Research (Lorenz Hilty)

The transition of energy systems toward a higher share of renewable energy creates complex challenges in designing, implementing, controlling and maintaining the systems. Environmental assessments of system structures and the decisions made during design, implementation and operation are usually based on complex data, models and decision procedures and therefore involve innovative applications of information and communication technologies (ICT). This special issue of Environmental Impact Assessment Review gives a broad overview of ICT-based approaches to meet the challenges of renewable energy sources. It is based on papers selected from the 27th EnviroInfo Conference held at the University of Hamburg in September 2013 under the theme “ICT and Renewable Energies” (Page et al., 2013). The papers have been expanded by the authors and submitted to this special issue. In addition, some papers submitted to this journal independent of the EnviroInfo conference were included in the special issue.

The goal of this thesis is to evaluate different modes of representation and clustering algorithms for agent-based model of a market. In our case, it is a research of the timber market, which was developed by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL). The developed and implemented variants are compared and evaluated using various parameters. It shows that the results are highly dependent on the input data. There is no suitable optimal solution for all kind of input data. The greater the number of transactions, the harder it is to display the data intelligible. This also applies for transactions over large geographical distances. The clustering algorithms strongly depend on all these factors as well.

Universities play a crucial role in promoting sustainability principles and should contribute to a paradigm shift towards a more sustainable society. They are essential drivers of education for sustainable development (ESD) and constitute fundamental vehicles to explore, test, develop and communicate conditions for transformative change (Disterheft et al. 2013; Leal Filho 2012). But before universities can really promote and drive sustainable development (SD), their sustainability activities must extend a still prevailing narrow perception of sustainability, limited to environmental issues or the simple integration of sustainability topics into existing curricula (Wals 2014; Leal Filho 2009). In order to incorporate SD into the daily life of universities, sustainability has to become mainstream and cannot be implemented as a simple ‘add-on’. This mainstreaming or institutionalising is only achieved, when the idea of SD is accepted and integrated into a universities’ culture and its day-to-day operations (Lozano 2006a). In short, SD must become an integrative and structural element of all aspects of higher education institutions (HEI) (Tilbury 2011). Without a whole-institution approach that aims at real change and a holistic integration of SD, university are caught in a crossfire of greenwashing, reductionist models and the increasing demand to produce knowledge and students simply for an economy based on unchallenged economic growth.

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The component “thing” of the Internet of Things does not yet exist in current business process modeling standards. The “thing” is the essential and central concept of the Internet of Things, and without its consideration we will not be able to model the business processes of the future, which will be able to measure or change states of objects in our real-world environment. The presented approach focuses on integrating the concept of the Internet of Things into the meta-model of the process modeling standard BPMN 2.0 as standard-conform as possible. By a terminological and conceptual delimitation, three components of the standard are examined and compared towards a possible expansion. By implementing the most appropriate solution, the new thing concept becomes usable for modelers, both as a graphical and machine-readable element.

In this paper statistical Indicators describing material flows of an economy are explained. Based on these indicators the material flows of Switzerland, various countries of the EU and on a global level are described. Finally, it is discussed whether an absolute decoupling of the economy from the resource use is likely to happen and what the information society can contribute to this.

Although software products are immaterial goods, their use can bring about significant materials and energy flows. Software characteristics determine which hardware capacities are made available and how much electric energy is used by end-user devices, networks, and data centers. The connection between software characteristics and the demand for natural resources caused by the manufacture and use of ICT systems has been the object of little scientific study to date. The present study breaks new ground by exploring the effects of software on the indirect use of natural resources by hardware. The study identifies starting points in the realm of software that can contribute to conserving natural resources or at least to slowing further growth of their use by ICT systems. A particular focus of the study is on methodological problems arising when assessing the resource use of software products. Such problems include difficulties in defining functional units as well as problems of measurement and allocation. Approaches such as standardizing patterns of use and benchmarks as well as defining and implementing sustainability requirements in the software development process are sketched out as possible solutions. Based on these considerations, the study formulates initial recommendations for action in the areas of research and standardization, product labeling, information for users concerning configuration, best practice guides as well as training and professional development.

Obwohl Softwareprodukte immaterielle Güter sind, kann die Nutzung von Software erhebliche Stoff und Energieströme auslösen. Eigenschaften der Software entscheiden, welche Hardwarekapazitäten vorgehalten werden und wieviel elektrische Energie in Endgeräten, Netzwerken und Rechenzentren verbraucht wird. Der Zusammenhang zwischen Softwareeigenschaften und dem Bedarf an natürlichen Ressourcen, der durch Herstellung und Betrieb von IKT-Systemen ausgelöst wird, ist bisher wissenschaftlich noch wenig untersucht. Die vorliegende Studie betritt Neuland, indem sie explorativ den Einfluss von Software auf die indirekte Inanspruchnahme natürlicher Ressourcen durch Hardware untersucht. Die Ressourceneffizienz von Software wird dabei im Kontext neuer Nutzungsformen wie mobiler Internetnutzung und neuer Software-Architekturmuster wie Cloud Computing betrachtet.

In this thesis has been investigated, how a graphical report that informs catering restaurants about the CO2 emissions of their cooked meals can be extended with game-based elements to create an incentive to reduce the CO2 emissions by choosing the right ingredients. It was also examined, by what an indicator is characterized, which enables a fair comparison of the cooked menus’ CO2 emissions. For that purpose people who are responsible for planning the menu, were asked in interviews and in an online survey which restrictions exist during menu planning and by what they are motivated personally. By evaluating the results of the two surveys there could be defined an indicator and developed five recommendations for extending the graphical report with game-based elements. The indicator and the five recommendations are presented at the end of this thesis.

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This paper discusses ethical issues in ubiquitous (or pervasive) computing from the perspective of the general discourse on ethics in computing, which started in the 1970s, two decades before the “ubicomp” vision emerged. The IFIP “Human Choice and Computers” conferences are used as points of reference for the general computing ethics discourse, and three technology as-sessment projects related to the ubicomp vision serve as a (nonrepresentative) sample of documents from the discussion of ethical issues in a ubicomp world. Revisiting these studies from the general computing ethics point of view shows that the basic issues have persisted, but ubicomp has added new aspects that were not anticipated in the earlier discourse.

The present study analyzes the interrelations of the education, research, society, and policy nexus on sustainable water use and agriculture in semiarid regions of Tunisia. The selected region of Tunisia is one of the most water-stressed regions in northern Africa, strongly exporting fruits and vegetables to European mainland whereas at the same time strongly lacking water resources and reducing production of food for its own growing population. Water scarcity is the major problem in the agriculture of semiarid regions. Along with the population growth, water resources (qualitatively and quantitatively) for food production is exposed to severe strains and has become an important topic for science and politics as well as for the general public in these countries as well as globally. Natural water resources in Tunisia are faced with serious problems related to their quantity and quality (Mekki et al. 2013). Only 8.4 % of the total shallow groundwater has salinity levels that do not exceed 1.5 g/L (Benjemaa et al. 1999). Thus, there is also a lack of fresh drinking water for the population, caused by the extensive use of deep and fossil ground water by agriculture. Due to the lack of conventional water resources, water of marginal quality is used for agricultural irrigation.

This introductory chapter provides definitions of sustainability, sustainable development, decoupling, and related terms; gives an overview of existing interdisciplinary research fields related to ICT for Sustainability, including Environmental Informatics, Computational Sustainability, Sustainable HCI, and Green ICT; introduces a conceptual framework to structure the effects of ICT on sustainability; and provides an overview of this book.

This chapter provides an overview of energy demand issues in the field of ICT with a focus on the history of measuring, modelling and regulating ICT electricity consumption and the resulting methodological challenges. While the energy efficiency of ICT hardware has been dramatically improving and will continue to improve for some decades, the overall energy used for ICT is still increasing. The growing demand for ICT devices and services outpaces the efficiency gains of individual devices. Worldwide per capita ICT electricity consumption exceeded 100 kWh/year in 2007 (a value which roughly doubles if entertainment equipment is included) and is further increasing. Methodological challenges include issues of data collection and modelling ICT devices and services, assessing the entire life cycle of ICT devices and infrastructures, ac-counting for embedded ICT, and assessing the effect of software on ICT energy consumption.

Estimates of the energy intensity of the Internet diverge by several orders of magnitude. We present existing assessments and identify diverging definitions of the system boundary as the main reason for this large spread. The decision of whether or not to include end devices influences the result by 1-2 orders of magnitude. If end devices are excluded, customer premises equipment (CPE) and access networks have a dominant influence. Of less influence is the consideration of cooling equipment and other overhead, redundancy equipment, and the amplifiers in the optical fibers. We argue against the inclusion of end devices when assessing the energy intensity of the Internet, but in favor of including CPE, access networks, redundancy equipment, cooling and other overhead as well as optical fibers. We further show that the intensities of the metro and core network are best modeled as energy per data, while the intensity of CPE and access networks are best modeled as energy per time (i.e., power), making overall assessments challenging. The chapter concludes with a formula for the energy intensity of CPE and access networks. The formula is presented both in generic form as well as with concrete estimates of the average case to be used in quick assessments by practitioners. The following chapter develops a similar formula for the core and edge networks. Taken together, the two chapters provide an assessment method of the Internet's energy intensity that takes into account dierent modeling paradigms for dierent parts of the network.

Environmental assessments of digital services seeking to take into account the Internet’s energy footprint typically require models of the energy intensity of the Internet. Existing models have arrived at conflicting results. This has lead to increased uncertainty and reduced comparability of assessment results. We present a bottom-up model for the energy intensity of the Internet that draws from the current state of knowledge in the field and is specifically directed towards assessments of digital services. We present the numeric results and explain the application of the model in practice. Complementing the previous chapter that presented a generic approach and results for access networks and customer premise equipment, we present a model to assess the energy intensity of the core networks, yielding the result of 0.052kWh/GB.