Proceedings of EnviroInfo and ICT for Sustainability 2015

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41 articles
Proceedings Article

A framework for sustainability assessment of ICT futures. Scenarios and sustainability impacts of future ICT- societies

Yevgeniya Arushanyan, Elisabeth Ekener-Petersen, Åsa Moberg, Vlad C. Coroama
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...
Proceedings Article

Assessing the Uses of NLP-based Surrogate Models for Solving Expensive Multi-Objective Optimization Problems: Application to Potable Water Chains

Florin Capitanescu, Antonino Marvuglia, Enrico Benetto, Aras Ahmadi, Ligia Tiruta-Barna
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...
Proceedings Article

Eco innovations in European countries

Pawel Bartoszczuk
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...
Proceedings Article

Environmental monitoring of continuous phenomena by sensor data streams: A system approach based on Kriging

Peter Lorkowski, Thomas Brinkhoff
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...
Proceedings Article

Exploring the effect of ICT solutions on GHG emissions in 2030

Jens Malmodin, Pernilla Bergmark
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...
Proceedings Article

GIS-based Life Cycle Assessment of urban building stocks retrofitting- a bottom-up framework applied to Luxembourg

Alessio Mastrucci, Emil Popovici, Antonino Marvuglia, Luís De Sousa, Enrico Benetto, Ulrich Leopold
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...
Proceedings Article

I am more than the sum of my parts: an e-waste design fiction

Vanessa Thomas, Manu J. Brueggemann, David Feldman
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...
Proceedings Article

Indirect rebound and reverse rebound effects in the ICT-sector and emissions of CO2

Cecilia Håkansson, Göran Finnveden
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...
Proceedings Article

The Green Practitioner: A decision-making tool for green ICT

Karl Lundfall, Paola Grosso, Patricia Lago, Giuseppe Procaccianti
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...
Proceedings Article

Labelling sustainable software products and websites: Ideas, Approaches, and Challenges

Eva Kern, Markus Dick, Stefan Naumann, Andreas Filler
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,...
Proceedings Article

Midpoint vs single score in multi-criteria optimization under life cycle assessment constraints: the case of potable water treatment chains

Florin Capitanescu, Elorri Igos, Antonino Marvuglia, Enrico Benetto
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...
Proceedings Article

Open Data Model for (Precision) Agriculture Applications and Agricultural Pollution Monitoring

Tomáš Rezník, Karel Charvát, Vojtech Lukas, Karel Charvát Jr., Šárka Horáková, Michal Kepka
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,...
Proceedings Article

Perceptions and behaviour towards climate change and energy savings: the role of social media

Lara S.G. Piccolo, Harith Alani
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,...
Proceedings Article

Pre-installation challenges: classifying barriers to the introduction of smart home technology

Luis Carlos Rubino de Oliveira, Andrew May, Val Mitchell, Mike Coleman, Tom Kane, Steven Firth
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...
Proceedings Article

Work hubs - location considerations and opportunities for reduced travel

Anna Kramers, Mattias Höjer, Marcus Nyberg, Malin Söderholm
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...
Proceedings Article

Social Electricity: The evolution of a Large-Scale, Green ICT Social Application through two Case Studies in Cyprus and Singapore

Andreas Kamilaris, Andreas Pitsillides, Christos Fidas, Sekhar Kondepudi
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...
Proceedings Article

The Citizen Field Engineer: Crowdsourced Maintenance of Connected Water Infrastructure. Scenarios for smart and sustainable water futures in Nairobi, Kenya

Fanny von Heland, Marcus Nyberg, Anna Bondesson, Pontus Westerberg
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...
Proceedings Article

Toward Collaborative LCA Ontology Development: a Scenario-Based Recommender System for Environmental Data Qualification

Akkharawoot Takhom, Mitsuru Ikeda, Boontawee Suntisrivaraporn, Thepchai Supnithi
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...
Proceedings Article

Energy demand of workplace computer solutions - A comprehensive assessment including both end-user devices and the power consumption they induce in data centers

Ralph Hintemann, Klaus Fichter
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...
Proceedings Article

Energy matters in buildings: Individual and collective issues

Marie Denward, Annelise De Jong, Rebekah Olsen
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...
Proceedings Article

Energy saving at work - and when not working! Insights from a comparative study

Timo Jakobi, Gunnar Stevens
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...
Proceedings Article

Big Data for Big Problems-Climate Change, Water Availability, and Food Safety

Walter Armbruster, Margaret MacDonell
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...
Proceedings Article

A systematic review of environmentally conscious product design

Zhongkai Li, Jorge Marx Gómez, Alexandra Pehlken
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...
Proceedings Article

Distanciation: a key challenge for 21st Century conservation

Leticia Margarita Ochoa-Ochoa, Sandra Nogué, Rafa Devillamagallón, Richard J. Ladle
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...
Proceedings Article

Education and Health in ICT-futures: Scenarios and sustainability impacts of ICT-societies

Luciane Aguiar Borges
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...
Proceedings Article

The EcoPanel - designing for reflection on greener grocery shopping practices

Ulrica Bohné, Jorge Luis Zapico, Cecilia Katzeff
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...
Proceedings Article

Educating for ICT4S: Unpacking sustainability and ethics of ICT student intakes

Samuel Mann, 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

Understanding climate change tweets: an open source toolkit for social media analysis

Diana Maynard, Kalina Bontcheva
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...
Proceedings Article

40 Gbps Access for Metro networks: Implications in terms of Sustainability and Innovation from an LCA Perspective

Reza Farrahi Moghaddam, Yves Lemieux, Mohamed Cheriet
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,...
Proceedings Article

A survey on application of maturity models for smart grid: Review of the state-of -the-art

Mathias Uslar, Julia Masurkewitz
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...
Proceedings Article

A Taxonomy of Motivational Affordances for Meaningful Gamified and Persuasive Technologies

Paul Weiser, Dominik Bucher, Francesca Cellina, Vanessa De Luca
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....
Proceedings Article

Breaking Barriers on Reuse of Digital Devices Ensuring Final Recycling

David Franquesa, Leandro Navarro, David L´opez, Xavier Bustamante, Santiago Lamora
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...
Proceedings Article

Digital Taxonomy for Sustainability

Jack H. Townsend
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)...
Proceedings Article

Exploring (un)sustainable growth of digital technologies in the home

Oliver Bates, Carolynne Lord, Bran Knowles, Adrian Friday, Adrian Clear, Mike Hazas
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...
Proceedings Article

A Strategy for Research on Governing the Anthropocene

Rolfe A. Leary, Vivian Kvist Johannsen
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...
Proceedings Article

ICT practices in smart sustainable cities - In the intersection of technological solutions and practices of everyday life

Miriam Börjesson Rivera, Elina Eriksson, Josefin Wangel
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....
Proceedings Article

Investigation into the slow adoption of retrofitting - What are the barriers and drivers to retrofitting, and how can ICT help

Christopher Weeks, Charles Delalonde, Chris Preist
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...
Proceedings Article

On fairness & sustainability: Motivating change in the networked society

Somya Joshi, Teresa Cerratto Pargman
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...
Proceedings Article

Potentials of energy consumption measurements in office environments

Timo Jakobi, Gunnar Stevens
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...
Proceedings Article

Self-organizing demand response with comfort-constrained heat pumps

Christian Hinrichs, Michael Sonnenschein, Adam Gray, Curran Crawford
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...
Proceedings Article

Sustainability Begins in the Street: A Story of Transition Town Totnes

Xinning Gui, Bonnie Nardi
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...