Proceedings of EnviroInfo and ICT for Sustainability 2015
Session: ConverStation I
17 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...