Proceedings of the 2014 conference ICT for Sustainability

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49 articles
Proceedings Article

Citizen observatories of water: Social innovation via eParticipation

Uta Wehn, Jaap Evers
We live in the age of Big Data, yet many areas of environmental management are still suffering from a lack of relevant data, information and knowledge that impedes sound decision making. A highly relevant phenomenon is therefore the so-called citizen observatories whereby the observations of ordinary...
Proceedings Article

Environmental Assessment of E-media Solutions: Challenges Experienced in Case Studies of Alma Media Newspapers

Yevgeniya Arushanyan, Åsa Moberg, Minna Nors, Catharina Hohenthal, Hanna Pihkola
The rapid and continuous development of information and communication technology (ICT) in society today is providing new means for various societal activities. To facilitate that new ICT solutions reduce environmental impacts and bring social improvements the potential impacts of those new solutions...
Proceedings Article

GreenMind - An Architecture and Realization for Energy Smart Buildings

Faris Nizamic, Tuan Anh Nguyen, Alexander Lazovik, Marco Aiello
Existing buildings are responsible for more than 40% of the world’s total primary energy consumption. Current building management systems fail to reduce unnecessary energy consumption and preserve user comfort at the same time mainly because they are unable to cope with dynamic changes caused by user’s...
Proceedings Article

ICT4S 2029: What will be the systems supporting sustainability in 15 years

Birgit Penzenstadler, Bill Tomlinson, Eric Baumer, Marcel Pufal, Ankita Raturi, Debra Richardson, Baki Cakici, Ruzanna Chitchyan
Research is often inspired by visions of the future. These visions can take on various narrative forms, and can fall anywhere along the spectrum from utopian to dystopian. Even though we recognize the importance of such visions to help us shape research questions and inspire rich design spaces to be...
Proceedings Article

ICT4S Reaching Out: Making sustainability relevant in higher education

Elina Eriksson, Daniel Pargman
Many media technology and computer science engineering students suffer from the preconceived opinion that sustainability is at best peripheral, and at worst irrelevant to their education. In this paper we discuss our experiences of integrating sustainability and ICT4S into a media technology engineering...
Proceedings Article

On the edge of supply: designing renewable energy supply into everyday life

Maria Angela Ferrario, Stephen Forshaw, Peter Newman, William Simm, Adrian Friday, Alan Dix
With peak oil behind us, nuclear generation capacity dwindling, and increasingly daunting looking carbon emissions targets, we are moving to a world where we must consider transitioning to renewable energy sources. Renewables are time varying and their inherent unpredictability must challenge our everyday...
Proceedings Article

Power law of engagement: Transferring disengaged householders into retrofitting energy savers

Christopher Weeks, Charles Delalonde, Chris Preist
How can we take householders from being disengaged passive energy consumers towards being highly motivated retrofitting energy saving masters In this paper the ”Power law of engagement model for energy saving” is introduced, which breaks down the process of engaging householders into 8 defined stages....
Proceedings Article

Web for Sustainability: Tackling Environmental Complexity with Scale

Jack Townsend
There are contrasting ways to understand the Web: as global technical infrastructure, the largest ever information construct, and as social new media. Existing communities of ICT for sustainability, such as environmental informatics, Green ICT, and even the more recent sustainable HCI, tend to focus...
Proceedings Article

A Practical Model for Evaluating the Energy Efficiency of Software Applications

Georgios Kalaitzoglou, Magiel Bruntink, Joost Visser
Evaluating the energy efficiency of software applications currently is an ad-hoc affair, since no practical and idely applicable model exists for this purpose. The need for such an evaluation model is pressing given the sharp increase in energy demand generated by the ICT industry. In particular, we...
Proceedings Article

A Review of Top-Down Models of Internet Network Energy Intensity

Daniel Schien, Chris Preist
Assessments of digital services wishing to take into account an energy footprint of the Internet typically require models of the energy intensity of the Internet. A common approach to the modeling of the energy intensity is to combine estimates of market surveys of installed network devices on a national...
Proceedings Article

A Systems Thinking View on Cloud Computing and Energy Consumption

Michal Sedlacko, Andre Martinuzzi, Karin Dobernig
Cloud Computing is often regarded as form of "green computing". However, the growth of cloud computing also goes hand in hand with an increasing demand for energy, caused by a continuously growing demand for content, data-intensive applications and bandwidth. The debates on the energy implications of...
Proceedings Article

Addressing the Obsolescence of End-User Devices: Approaches from the Field of Sustainable HCI

Christian Remy, Elaine M. Huang
The progress of technological development and the resulting rapid replacement of end-user devices has brought increasing issues of electronics waste upon our society. Interaction designers and researchers within the field of Human-Computer Interaction have begun to tackle issues of environmental sustainability...
Proceedings Article

Agent-Based Analysis of Annual Energy Usages for Domestic Heating based on a Heat Pump

Seyed Amin Tabatabaei, Dilhan J. Thilakarathne, Jan Treur
This paper describes an agent-based analysis approach to determine in which way a net zero house can be obtained. In particular, it addresses agent-based simulation to estimate annual energy usage for heating based on an air to water heat pump. Based on the introduced approach house owners will be able...
Proceedings Article

An Aspect Oriented Model for Software Energy Efficiency in Decentralised Servers

Samuel Chinenyeze, Xiaodong Liu, Ahmed Al-Dubai
Green software is currently gaining interests with the increasing impact of IT in energy consumption. Green-ness in software however, can be achieved at various stages of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Consequently, several software engineering concepts can be adopted for achieving greener...
Proceedings Article

An ethical basis for sustainability in the worldviews of first year students

Samuel Mann, Karyn Costello, Mike Lopez, Dobrila Lopez, Nell Smith
A key focus in transforming the profession of ICT to one of contributing to a sustainable future is the education of students who may think and act as sustainable practitioners in computing. An important understanding in this is the relationship between ethics and sustainability in the student intake....
Proceedings Article

Beyond Behavior Change: Household Retrofitting and ICT

Elaine Massung, Daniel Schien, Chris Preist
Sustainability research about using Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to reduce household energy consumption has recently focused on two potential strategies: “smart homes” that rely on sensors and technological innovations to automatically reduce the energy load, and tools that seek...
Proceedings Article

Big Data GIS Analytics Towards Efficient Waste Management in Stockholm

Hossein Shahrokni, Bram Van der Heijde, David Lazarevic, Nils Brandt
This paper presents preliminary findings from a big data analysis and GIS to identify the efficiency of waste management and transportation in the City of Stockholm. The aim of this paper is to identify inefficiencies in waste collection routes in the city of Stockholm, and to suggest potential improvements....
Proceedings Article

Blinded by data: The risks of the implicit focus on data in ICT for Sustainability

Jorge Luis Zapico
Sustainability is a normative concept, building on ideas such as justice, equity and responsibility, and based on human culture and society. Computers, internet, and the technologies that are central in our network society embed also normative values and are part of a cultural context. But the work looking...
Proceedings Article

Challenges and complexities in application of LCA approaches in the case of ICT for a sustainable future

Reza Farrahi Moghaddam, Fereydoun Farrahi Moghaddam, Thomas Dandres, Yves Lemieux, Réjean Samson, Mohamed Cheriet
In this work, three of many ICT-specific challenges of LCA are discussed. First, the inconsistency versus uncertainty is reviewed with regard to the meta-technological nature of ICT. As an example, the semiconductor technologies are used to highlight the complexities especially with respect to energy...
Proceedings Article

Changing Behaviour to Save Energy: ICT-Based Surveillance for a Low-Carbon Economy in the Seventh Framework Programme

Baki Cakici, Markus Bylund
In research and development of information and communication technologies for sustainability, there is a strong belief that human behaviour can be monitored at the individual level to generate different signals, and that these signals can be used to influence individuals to behave differently. We analyse...
Proceedings Article

Characterization of the energy consumption of websites: Impact of website implementation on resource consumption

Olivier Philippot, Alain Anglade, Thierry Leboucq
This document presents the Web Energy Archive (WEA) project led by the Green Code Lab. This tools aims at measuring the computer resource consumption (energy, memory…) of the loading of a website in a browser. Firstly, considering the measure of 500 websites, website behavior can be characterized in...
Proceedings Article

Considerations for macro-level studies of ICT´s enablement potential

Jens Malmodin, Pernilla Bergmark, Nina Lövehagen, Mine Ercan, Anna Bondesson
This paper explores how companies and other stakeholders could assess the macro-level enabling potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), in other words, the ability of ICT to reduce the negative sustainability impact of other industry sectors at a society level, and identifies some...
Proceedings Article

Cryogenic: Enabling Power-Aware Applications on Linux

Alejandra Morales Ruiz, Wilfried Daniels, Danny Hughes, Christian Grothoff
Modern hardware devices that are idle for a certain period of time enter into sleep mode as a means of reducing power consumption. Naturally, devices should remain in sleep mode for as long as possible to maximize energy savings. However, a growing number of applications perform non-urgent background...
Proceedings Article

Dematerialization and Environment: a text-mining landscape on academic, blog and press publications.

Alexandre Delanoë, David Chavalarias, Alain Anglade
This paper presents the methodology and results of an exhaustive text-mining analysis performed on the subject “Dematerialization and Environment”. Three main fields have been investigated: international academic publications (documents extracted from the Web of Science database during the period 1994-2013),...
Proceedings Article

Energy Usage Attitudes of Urban India

Mohit Jain, Deepika Chhabra, Jennifer Mankoff, Amarjeet Singh
Though rapid increase in energy consumption has become a global problem, most of the solutions developed to address it for residential consumers are based on qualitative studies conducted with small numbers of users, typically in the developed world. Recent work has begun to explore consumption practices,...
Proceedings Article

Environmental aspects of media scenarios for the future ICT society

Malin Picha Edwardsson
During the past 50 years, the media channels, the media consumption patterns and the entire influence of media in society have changed dramatically. Looking into the future, the pace of change is not likely to decrease. In order to prepare for the future, it is important to increase our understanding...
Proceedings Article

Environmental labelling of mobile phones : LCA standardisation process

Damien Prunel, Etienne Lees Perasso, Axel Roy, Catherine Moulin
The mobile phone market is constantly evolving. Retailers and manufacturers offer a larger number of features to customers: a mobile network more and more efficient (2G, 3G then 4G), handsets with computer features, navigation, gaming, etc. This progress involves the use of more efficient and reduced...
Proceedings Article

From Computational Thinking to Systems Thinking: A conceptual toolkit for sustainability computing

Steve Easterbrook
If information and communication technologies (ICT) are to bring about a transformational change to a sustainable society, then we need to transform our thinking. Computer professionals already have a conceptual toolkit for problem solving, sometimes known as computational thinking. However, computational...
Proceedings Article

Gaming for Good Changing the Game for Corporate Sustainability

Petteri Alinikula, Juha-Lasse Latikka, Jussi Paanajärvi
Mobile technology offers great opportunities for renewing corporations’ sustainability agenda. In particular, the positive impact can be increased and new segments of people can be engaged. Gaming for Good is an area that combines the most popular mobile applications, games, with sustainability ingredients....
Proceedings Article

ICT 4 Climate Change Adaptation: Systemic and Generative Perspectives & Tools

Paul Shabajee, Malcolm Fairbrother, John-David Dewsbury, Chris Preist
The predicted manifestations of global climate change are diverse and extensive. Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) offer great potential to enable and enhance climate change adaptation projects, programmes and activities. As yet these roles have received relatively little systematic...
Proceedings Article

ICT system for SMART CITY management

Jan Studzinski, Robert Brylka, Krzysztof Kazubski
In the paper a concept of an ICT system for complex management of whole city is presented. The ICT system called Smart City consist of several branch modules integrated by a GIS platform. The system is being developed by the Systems Research Institute (IBS PAN) in Warsaw in cooperation with Intergraph...
Proceedings Article

ICT-based sub-practices in sustainable development of city transport

Greger Henriksson, Anders Gullberg, Mattias Höjer, Åsa Nyblom
How could use of ICTs make transport systems in large cities sustainable To what degree would then everyday patterns of action, in which use of ICT is becoming increasingly integrated, be an effective force in such sustainable development In this paper we use own and other ethnographic studies of how...
Proceedings Article

Is there a role for Mobiles to support Sustainable Agriculture in Africa

Simon Batchelor, Nigel Scott, Cristina Manfre, Alvaro Valverde Lopez, David Edwards
In this paper we present the findings of an in-depth consultation with 50 experts in Agriculture and ICT. The qualitative study explored how ICTs, particularly mobile phones, could be used to accelerate the uptake of Sustainable Agriculture in Africa. Situating the responses in a broad literature review,...
Proceedings Article

Life cycle assessment of videoconferencing with call management servers relying on virtualization

Nathan Vandromme, Thomas Dandres, Maurice Elsa, Réjean Samson, Saida Khazri, Reza Farrahi Moghaddam, Kim Khoa Nguyen, Yves Lemieux, Mohamed Cheriet
Recently, data centres have been called out for their particularly high energy consumption, which already accounts for 1.5% of the total global electricity consumption and is among the world’s fastest growing energy consumptions. To reduce the data centres’ environmental impacts, technologies such as...
Proceedings Article

Modelling of Electricity Mix in Temporal Differentiated Life-Cycle-Assessment to Minimize Carbon Footprint of a Cloud Computing Service

Elsa Maurice, Thomas Dandres, Reza Farrahi Moghaddam, Kim Nguyen, Yves Lemieux, Mohamed Cherriet, Réjean Samson
The information and communications technologies (ICT) sector is seeking to reduce the electricity consumption of data processing centres. Among the initiatives to improve energy efficiency is the shift to cloud computing technology. Thanks to very favourable geographical conditions, the Canadian energy...
Proceedings Article

Planning for smart sustainable cities: Decisions in the planning process and actor networks

Anna Kramers, Mattias Höjer, Josefin Wangel
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have been ascribed an important role for decreasing energy use and mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in urban areas. Through automation, dematerialisation, persuasion and soft transformation ICT holds the potential of making urban life more sustainable,...
Proceedings Article

Reducing Risk by Reducing Hazard – Use of Chemical Hazard Screening as the First Step in the Assessment Process

Hans Wendschlag, Cory Robertson, Helen Holder, Curtis Wray
With the introduction of materials specific legislation, such as RoHS in 2003, the pace of change of materials in the electronics industry has seen a dramatic increase. Changing materials is costly, and an important business need is the development of a process to select alternatives that will not need...
Proceedings Article

Sensor-Actuator Smart lighting System: System Organizational Concept and Challenges

Adnan Al-Anbuky
The emergence of LED public lighting systems have encouraged offering wider range of public light utilization for services other than ambient lighting. Existing literature has highlighted engagement with issues relevant to energy management, visual health, environmental pollution, public security, and...
Proceedings Article

Shanghai’s role in the Asian cyber city network: Using Google hyperlinks to measure Shanghai’s development in the Information Age

Xiaohui Wang
With the development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), the rapid growths of Asian cities attract global attention on urban connectivity in the world network. Taking Shanghai as an example, this essay seeks to unpack the question of its changing position in Asian ICT network and ICT’s...
Proceedings Article

Supercomputers Keeping People Warm in the Winter

Mario Romero, Hanna Hasselqvist, Gert Svensson
We present the design and evaluation of the heat recovery system for KTH’s Lindgren, Stockholm’s fastest supercomputer, a Cray XE6. Lindgren came into service in 2010 and has since been primarily used for complex numeric simulations of fluid mechanics and computational chemistry and biology. The heat...
Proceedings Article

Supporting Sustainability Decisions in Large Organisations

David Stefan, Emmanuel Letier
Sustainability management systems are important technologies used by large organisations to monitor and control their CO2 emissions and other environmental impacts. So far, these systems have been designed to support data collection and reporting mandated by regulations, but they provide little support...
Proceedings Article

Sustainability: Are We All Talking About the Same Thing State-of-the-Art and Proposals for an Integrative Definition of Sustainability in Information Systems

Friedrich Chasin
Degradation of the natural environment is presently attracting significant attention among the Information Systems (IS) academic community. Consequently, the subject of sustainability continues to gain a foothold in the mainstream of IS research. However, as the body of research grows, the exact meaning...
Proceedings Article

Sustainable choices for cloud applications: a focus on CO2 emissions

Cinzia Cappiello, Paco Melià, Barbara Pernici, Pierluigi Plebani, Monica Vitali
The widespread adoption of cloud computing is having a big impact on the environment since the energy consumption of data centers and the resulting emissions are significantly increasing. Researchers and practitioners in this field are looking for methods to improve the energy efficiency of data centers...
Proceedings Article

SustData: A Public Dataset for ICT4S Electric Energy Research

Lucas Pereira, Filipe Quintal, Rodolfo Gonçalves, Nuno Jardim Nunes
Energy and environmental sustainability can benefit a lot from advances in data mining and machine learning techniques. However, those advances rely on the availability of relevant datasets required to develop, improve and validate new techniques. Only recently the first datasets were made publicly available...
Proceedings Article

The Smart City from a Public Value Perspective

Ellie Cosgrave, Theo Tryfonas, Tom Crick
This paper explores whether it is useful to view the fundamental ideas behind the smart city concept through the lens of the ‘Public Value Management’ (PVM) paradigm. It investigates how appropriate ICT investment in cities might be articulated and valued through the concept of PVM. In order to achieve...
Proceedings Article

The Transition from Desktop Computers to Tablets: A Model for Increasing Resource Efficiency

Roland Hischier, Patrick Wäger
Sales statistics of computing devices show that users are not replacing units one by one, but rather adding additional devices to their hardware portfolios. In this paper, the authors describe the outcomes of a first attempt to quantify the ecological implications of these changes in the use of the ICT...
Proceedings Article

Time is of essence: Changing the horizon of travel planning

Åsa Nyblom, Elina Eriksson
Recent years have seen a rapid growth of ICT-services related to the transportation area, and for example Advanced Travel Information Services (ATIS) have been proposed as one means to achieve a decrease of environmental impacts of transportation through behavioural change. However, empirical studies...
Proceedings Article

Understanding Higher Order Impacts of Green ICT

Albert Hankel
ICT is known to have three orders of impact: direct, indirect and systemic. The first is often regarded as 'part of the problem', the latter two can also be 'part of the solution' to reduce the global environmental impact of human activities. A number of studies show that the impact of ICT itself is...
Proceedings Article

Using Participatory Data Analysis to Understand Social Constraints and Opportunities of Electricity Demand-Shifting

Jacky Bourgeois, Janet Van Der Linden, Gerd Kortuem, Blaine A. Price, C. Rimmer
This paper reports results from an empirical study that explored the potential of interactive electricity Demand- Shifting – a particular form of behavior change where electricity consumption is shifted towards times of the day when production is at its highest – in the context of residential solar electricity...