Proceedings of EnviroInfo and ICT for Sustainability 2015

This paper addresses the multi-objective constrained optimization of a drinking water production plant. It reports the successful coupling between the Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm (SPEA2), which is a well-established multi-goal elitist metaheuristic global optimizer, and EVALEAU, which is a...

It can be observed that, when faced with news of environmental crises such as the impacts of climate change, many people increasingly express detachment or even denial. Given the fundamental importance of public participation in conservation action, it is clearly important to understand how this situation...

Caught between the infinite promise unleashed by technology proliferation and the unprecedented scale of resource depletion, waste and inequity, we inhabit a space where critical alternatives are sought more than ever. As a reflection of the above, we find in HCI, a slant towards technological quick-fixes...

Recent scholarship in sustainable HCI has called for research beyond change at the individual level. This paper aims to contribute to research on community-level sustainable practices. We report an ethnographic study of the Transition movement, a global social movement encouraging sustainability. We...

In practice many multi-objective optimization problems relying on computationally expensive black-box model simulators of industrial processes have to be solved with limited computing time budget. In this context, this paper proposes and explores the uses of an iterative heuristic approach aiming at...

This paper is a direct response to recent calls for sustainable technology researchers to use design fiction in their work. It seeks to explore the question: can design fiction be a useful technique for provoking conversations about today’s complex global e-waste ecosystem To address that question, the...

The awareness for software as an important player regarding the energy consumption caused by ICT steadily increased in the past years. The impact of software on the energy consumption is also more and more accepted by the research community under the umbrella of sustainability in general. Nevertheless,...

Both agricultural and environmental domains have to manage many different and heterogeneous sources of information that need to be combined in order to make environmentally and economically sound decisions. Such examples may be found at the definition of subsidies, national strategies for rural development,...

Reducing energy consumption is one of the most pursued economic and ecologic challenges concerning societies as a whole, individuals and organizations alike. While politics start taking measures for energy turnaround and smart home energy monitors are becoming popular, few studies have touched on sustainability...

Recently environmentally conscious product design (ECPD) is highlighted by research community, because of the global conscious about low carbon emission and sustainable development. ECPD cares about the environmental, social and economic impacts of products during their life cycle phases, with the destination...

This study explores the performance of the education and health sectors in relation to five ICT futures for Sweden in 2060. The accessibility, affordability, quality and efficiency of these sectors influence the creation and maintenance of essential collective values such as democracy and justice; consequently...

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....

Collective awareness about climate change is an ongoing problem because there is such a wealth of information available, which can be confusing, contradictory and difficult to interpret. In order to help citizens understand environmental concerns, and to help organisations better inform and target interested...

In this work, the implications of new technologies, more specifically the new optical FTTH technologies, are studied both from the functional and non-functional perspectives. In particular, some direct impacts are listed in the form of abandoning non-functional technologies, such as micro-registration,...

Digital Devices or Electric and Electronic Equipment (EEE) are scrapped at an alarming rate instead of being salvaged, fixed, and reused. For the reuse sector to flourish, donors, receivers, and reuse centers need services and technologies to gain effectiveness, efficiency, and traceability to reach...

HCI and Ubicomp research often centres around the support of humans interacting with digital technology. Despite this obvious focus, there seems to be less work on understanding how these digital technologies can lead to growth in use, dependence, and influence practices in everyday life. In this paper...

Reducing energy consumption is one of the most pursued economic and ecological challenges concerning societies as a whole, individuals and organizations alike. At the same time, advances in ubiquitous computing now allow for comprehensively measuring energy consumption in close detail. Still, few studies...

Environmental monitoring as technological endeavor has to deal with limitations in respect to transmission capacities, computational resources and storage space. Despite the progress in ICT, those limitations remain significant because of rising demands like real-time monitoring on the one hand and increased...

Success in promoting changes in behaviour is often dependent on the choice of interventions. This research investigates the use of social technology features as interventions to raise energy awareness and to promote a collective behavior change towards saving energy. Aiming at understanding this scenario,...

Increasing technological developments indicate potential for a variety of improvements in the domestic environment. As part of an interdisciplinary research project, this study interviewed households prior to the installation of smart home technologies (SHTs) in order to identify critical issues at the...

This paper describes a collaborative approach to ontology development for data qualification for life cycle assessment by taking into consideration the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) and Data Quality Indicator (DQI). The developed ontology is integrated with rule-based knowledge, to provide userdefined policies...

Previous strategic analyses of the field of ICT for sustainability (ICT4S) have often underplayed the role of ICTs in linking large numbers of people, in shaping and transferring ideas, and also the range of sustainability effects that ICTs can cause. The Digital Taxonomy for Sustainability (digitaltaxonomy.com)...

ICT, information and communications technology, has radically transformed our world and is now an inextricable part of what it means to live a normal life as a citizen, at least in high income countries. This has led to a situation where ICT has become so taken for granted that it has lost its visibility....

More and more different organizations are necessarily being involved in realizing the Smart Grid, but each of them has to fulfill a different role concerning the overall transition. Stakeholders from the transmission and from the distribution layer must be considered. Deriving from this, a large variety...

Sustainable human-computer interaction is investigating the role of persuasive and gamified technologies in encouraging people to engage in a more sustainable lifestyle. Motivation is a key requirement for behavior change, yet many persuasive systems do not sufficiently account for motivational aspects....

We present a hierarchical triangular framework to guide Anthropocene governing research. We lay out basic system levels and inter-relations. We include a ‘human’ level, and address the different affects human activities are exerting on the other levels and interrelations. We point out that in more recent...

The increasing pervasion of information and communication technology (ICT) in the power grid motivates innovative research towards intelligent system control. Especially against the background of the growing share of renewable generation, novel approaches that mitigate e. g. grid expansion costs are...

The rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT) has an influence on all societal sectors and can have both positive and negative consequences. To support ICT for sustainability (ICT4S), we need to learn when and how ICT can enable sustainable development. It is important to take...

The building sector represents one of the major sources of environmental impact due especially to space and domestic hot water heating and construction works. A number of studies focused so far on estimating the energy savings and carbon emissions reduction potential achievable by retrofitting urban...

It has been suggested that the ICT sector has a large potential of reducing environmental impacts in society through enabling smarter and more efficient solutions. Some of this potential may however be offset by different types of rebound and other indirect effects. There are a number of different types...

Cities worldwide are suffering from congestion among public transport users and motorists. Mayors have set ambitious targets to reduce traffic and improve public transportation, while at the same time reducing energy use. This paper investigates the option of using flexible workplaces in local nodes...

Sustainable water supply is a profound problem in slums in Nairobi, Kenya. Smart water management that integrates information and communication technology (ICT) to monitor water resources, diagnose problems, improve efficiency and coordinate management can help to overcome supply challenges as well as...

The CELSIUS project is an EU funded demonstrator project that aims to facilitate the distribution, deployment and operation of smart district heating and cooling solutions across Europe, while at the same time supporting cities in the development of trustworthy, affordable and low carbon heat supply...

The goal of this paper is to present eco-innovation implementation in some European countries. Expected environmental law is very important for enforcing firm to minimise emission to air and water, diminish amount of hazardous substances and increase recycling. Cost reduction is another incentive for...

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are expected to have a great potential to reduce the GHG emissions across society, however limited data on actual reductions have been published so far. Based on available data on real GHG emission reductions realized by different ICT solutions, this paper...

The environmental impact of ICT represents an increasing concern for modern society. Despite that, we still witness a lack of awareness from the ICT industry regarding their carbon footprint. In particular, practitioners lack knowledge and tools to perform informed decision-making in the area of Green...

Numerous green online social applications have emerged in recent years, aiming to motivate citizens towards pro environmental behavior. These applications exploit emerging new technologies, such as mobile computing, online social networking and the web, in order to affect their users in their everyday...

The number of Internet-enabled end-user devices such as personal computers, notebooks, tablets, smartphones, etc. is increasing constantly. However, since the devices themselves are becoming ever more energy-efficient, their overall energy consumption in the use phase of their life cycle seems to be...

Agriculture and the food supply chain face big problems related to climate change, water availability and food safety that challenge the ability to provide safe and affordable food security for the burgeoning world population. Applying data analytics to improve agricultural productivity involves a number...

While the purchases of organic food are increasing rapidly, it accounts for only a small fraction of the total consumption, and there is still a big gap between consumer values awareness and the actual consumption. This article explores how detailed personal feedback could help the households to gain...

In this paper we explore a number of reasons for the slow adoption of energy efficiency measures by householders. We use primary research collected over a two month longitudinal trial to define a number of the core barriers and drivers to retrofitting. The trial logged participants who were interested...