Download Information communication technologies for sustainable development

Sustainable Development:
The Role of Information and
Communication Technology
Alexander Schatten
www.schatten.info
KORSD Oct. 2009
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Institut für Softwaretechnik und Interaktive Systeme
Agenda
Information & Communication Technology –
Environmental “Footprint”
Mitigation
ICT supporting
Adaptation
ICT for Teaching and Public Awareness
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ICT – Environmental “Footprint”
 Resources
– Consumption
– (Electronic) Waste
 Energy Consumption
– “Green IT”
– Resource Efficiency: “A Factor of 10”
– Desktop Computing
– Data-Centers and Services
– Software as a Service
– Cloud Computing
– Accounting
 ICT as “amplifier” of
unsustainable behaviour
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Photo from ezioman (flickr)
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ICT and Resource Consumption
 ICT is consuming significant amounts of valuable resources
 Many resources are scarce or produced under questionable
conditions
 Valuable are mostly not recycled
 “Recycling” is done in developing countries
 Companies need to invest into recyclingfriendly product (“cradle-to-cradle”)
– Having the whole product-lifecycle in
mind at design-time
– Avoiding toxic substances like mercury,
PVC, flame retardants
– Having recycling programs in place
– Allowing easy dismantling of products
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Example Mobile Phone: Coltan
Congo:
Most important
source for Coltan &
one of largest
conflict-regions in
the world
Coltan:
Columbite Tantalite
Mineral that is used
in a broad range of
electronic products
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Example: Microprocessor
Production of a Microprocessor
In the 80s
Now
~ 12 Chemical Elements
~ 60 Chemical Elements!
Photo by Aranya Sen (flickr)
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Electronic Waste (EU)
Photo digitalsadhu (flickr)
2/3
Photo Greenpeace
1/3 treated
appropriately
Treatment of Electronic Waste within EU.
Numbers from EU Commission (2008)
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Global Population & Energy
Population Growth
Source: UNO: “The World at Six Billion”
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/sixbillion/sixbillion.htm
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Energy Consumption
Source: Energy Information Administration
(U.S. Government): International Energy Outlook 2009
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/highlights.html
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Green IT – Numbers
$ 8-9 billion
Estimated energy bills of datacenters worldwide
25%
Typical IT budget for average company
~ $ 1.900
Annual expenses for powering and cooling single server (2500 $)
5 years
Doubling of Energy Consumption of Servers (2000-2005)
70-80%
Utilisation of mainframes (70s, 80s)
~ 30%
Of Servers run under 3% peak and average utilisation; actually are using power
and cooling for doing no work
50-70%
Average energy consumption for cooling (HP, Uptime Inst. Study says: 60-70%)
18 Million
Server 2002
122 Million
Server 2020 (estimated)
Source: McKinsey and Company, part of a report titled "Revolutionizing Data Center Efficiency”,
Malone, C. and Belady, C. (2006) Metrics to Characterise Data Centre & IT Equipment Energy Use. Proc. Digital Power Forum, Richardson, TX,
USA, September.
InfoWorld, Ted Samson (2008)
Smart2020 Report
Borderstep Institute
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Energy Consumption & Carbon-Footprint by
Computers (Examples)
(incl. power consumption & embodied energy, data centers, PCs, network devices)
Germany 2004: 28 million metric tons CO2
(Air Traffic 22MT)
OECD 2010: 10% of total energy consumption
Global 830 million metric tons CO2
equals 2% of global carbon footprint
assumed to quadruple by 2020
“Some Computer Science Issues in Creating a Sustainable World”, Jennifer Mankoff, Robin Kravets and Eli Blevis, IEEE Computer Magazine (2008)
Data from “The Climate Group”, OECD, Presentation 2009 from Klaus Fichter
Photo from jmsuarez (Flickr)
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The Power of “10”: Game Consoles
~ 200 W
Playstation 3
Xbox 360
Playstation 2
~ 50 W
~ 20 W
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Nintendo Wii
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The Power of “10”: PCs
PC with CRT
~ 150-250 W
~ 100-200 W
PC with LCD
~ 50 W
Thin Client with LCD
~ 10-45 W
Notebook
~2W
OLPC / XO
Photos from Flickr: Gene, Plutor, John Pastor, One Laptop per Child
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Data-Centers and Services
“Hummer Strategy”
… or Virtualisation,
Cloud Computing
and Software as Service?
Photo from Paul Keleher, Flickr
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“Green IT”: Virtualisation and
In-House Services
 Datacenter In-House
 Replace Volume Servers with varying utilisation or low utilisation
with virtual machines running in one power-server
 Remove Fat-Clients where not absolutely necessary and replace
them with thin-clients and web-applications or thin-clients using
remote desktops
 Provide support for tele-working (virtual private networks…)
 Get consulting for “green” operation of data-center including issues
like:
– Optimising Facilities
– Highest possible operation temperature
– Reuse of heat (e.g. for building/office heating)
 Better: get rid of all services that can be outsourced (see following
slides)
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What is Cloud Computing?
 Cloud computing is the
IT equivalent of the Energy Grid
– Rent services and computing power as needed
– Use Cloud Computing to scale as needed
 Typical “Cloud” Services
–
–
–
–
Operation of Virtual Servers (e.g. Amazon EC2)
Network storage solutions (e.g. Amazon S3)
Database Services (e.g. Amazon SimpleDB)
Application Runtime Environments (e.g. Google
AppEngine)
– Middleware Services (e.g. Amazon Message Queue)
– E-Commerce Applications (e.g. Payment Services)
– Various Services (e.g. Zoho Office …)
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Amplifying Unsustainable Behaviour
 Rebound Effects
– More efficient steam engines  higher coal consumption
– More efficient cars (“Prius”)  cheaper per kilomerter  higher
mileage
– More efficient production (“Tata cars”)  much more cars on
the street  higher overall consumption
 Enabling Effects:
– Modern logistics:
Photo by photohome_uk (flickr)
• Flights become cheaper  more travel
• Transportation becomes more efficient and
cheaper  transport over greater distances
 Unplanned Effects:
– More Communication does not lead to
less travel, the opposite is true
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Agenda
Information & Communication Technology –
Environmental “Footprint”
Mitigation
ICT supporting
Adaptation
ICT for Teaching and Public Awareness
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Why ICT?
E.g. UPS: Left-turns no longer allowed!
Photo by iirraa (flickr)
Because optimisation opportunities will
emerge, that you never might have thought of!
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The Flat World
 Thomas Friedman,
”The world is flat”
 We move(d) from
– Command and Control to
– Collaborate and Connect
Economy/Society
 3 Billion people reach for the western
lifestyle
– It is impossible to fulfil this
demand with the current approach
 Economy, knowledge, work-force,
natural-resources are global issues
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In a flat world and a connected
economy there are hardly local
problems
Any significant
problem in a country
like Indonesia, India,
China or USA…
is immediately a global
problem.
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Example Indonesia:
The Economist (2006)
 Indonesia is losing almost 2m hectares
of forest a year (an area about the size
of Wales or Massachusetts)
 Illegal logging also carries big costs for
the human beings involved. Wellmanaged forests continue to provide
wood, and therefore revenue,
indefinitely. But those that have been
overexploited, or simply carelessly run let
alone razed will yield little or no money in
the future.
 The government of Indonesia (which has
the world's third-biggest tropical forests,
after Brazil and Congo, but the biggest
timber trade) estimated its annual losses
at around $3 billion. [due to illegal
logging]
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IT as a Supporter for
Mitigation efforts
 Green Supply Chains and E-Government – Think Global!
 Smart Production
 End-to-end Accounting
(e.g. Life Cycle Analysis, Input/Output Calculations)
 De-Materialisation
 Smart Buildings
– “If airplanes were build like buildings, you wouldn't fly in them”,
Stephen Selkowitz”, LBNL
 Smart Grids
“Although the ICT sector’s own emissions will rise as global demand
for products and services increases, these are estimated to be five
times less than the emissions that can be reduced through the
“enabling effect.”, Smart 2020 Report
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Possible Contributions in Different
Fields (Smart 2020 Report)
Taken from Smart 2020 Report
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“Green” Global Supply Chains
 “Measure and Connect” is foundation for optimisation
– Technologies like
• RFID
• Event-based Systems
• Data-warehouses
“Tag and Track” items through whole supply chain
“Trash that Thinks” (Saar and Thomas, 2003)
Work with (near) real-time data
Standardisation (usage of standardised protocols and practices)
Integrate with e-Government applications to enhance
transparency and better resource and waste management
 Check whether suppliers from second and third world countries
follow policies
 Global optimisation of supply chains (from supplier to production
lines to transportation to customer)
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Industrial Production
 Industrial Production is one of the largest contributors to
global emissions (Smart 2020 report):
– approx 23% total emission in 2002
– Uses nearly 50% of global electrical power
 Modernise development of production lines; software development,
simulation, data exchange is outdated compared to “business
information systems”
 End-to-end monitoring of production lines
 ICT systems allow transparency
and accountability
 Optimisations in motor systems
 Integration into global
supply-chain optimisation
 Be aware of rebound effect(s)!
Picture from ralphbijker (flickr)
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Impact of “Dematerialisation”
 Replace paper-based
business with electronic
business
 Online Media
 Reduce business travel
 Tele-Working
 E-Commerce
 E-Government
Taken from Smart 2020 Report
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ICT — Supporting Monitoring &
Adaptation
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Degradation of Biodiversity
“Devastating declines of amphibian species around the world are a sign of a
biodiversity disaster larger than just frogs, salamanders and their ilk, according to
researchers from the University of California, Berkeley.”, Science Daily
"There's no question that we are in a mass
extinction spasm right now," said David
Wake, professor of integrative biology at UC
Berkeley.
"Amphibian declines may be the window
into the future of what we can expect as
humans continue to alter the environment on
a global scale. Only now are government
officials finally willing to acknowledge that
humans have caused so much damage to the
environment that they are even affecting
global climate change.”
Vredenburg et. Al, 2007
Photo by Adolf Schatten
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Climate Change
“The observed increase in the concentration of
greenhouse gases (GHGs) since the preindustrial era
has most likely committed the world to a warming of
2.4°C (1.4°C to 4.3°C) above the preindustrial
surface temperatures. The committed warming is
inferred from the most recent Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates of the
greenhouse forcing and climate sensitivity. The
estimated warming of 2.4°C is the equilibrium
warming above preindustrial temperatures that the
world will observe even if GHG concentrations are
held fixed at their 2005 concentration levels but
without any other anthropogenic forcing such as the
cooling effect of aerosols. The range of 1.4°C to
4.3°C in the committed warming overlaps and
surpasses the currently perceived threshold range of
1°C to 3°C for dangerous anthropogenic
interference with many of the climate-tipping
elements such as the summer arctic sea ice,
Himalayan–Tibetan glaciers, and the Greenland Ice
Sheet.”
Ramanathan and Feng, "On avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference with the
climate system: Formidable challenges ahead", Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the United States, Vol.105, No.38 (2008)
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Photo by hAdamsky (flickr)
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ICT Supporting Adaptation
 Environmental Information Systems (Biodiversity Research, Sensor
Networks, GEOSS, ...)
 Connected global information systems and models
 Low-carbon-intensive technologies: e.g., more efficiency and
search for alternatives (transparent supply chains, dematerialisation
of workspaces)
 Support in case of catastrophes like
– robust dependable and communication technology
– Visualisation
– Geographical information systems
 Simulation and modeling adapted to certain regions e.g.
– Tourism prediction in Austria
– Water level rise
– Development of
agriculture
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Resilience
Allenby, B., Fink, F. 2005. Toward Inherently Secure and Resilient Societies, Science 309: 1034-1036
 Our global ICT infrastructure has to be given more consideration
 Communication in case of unreliable parts of the infrastructure or
attacks
 “Economic Crisis” showed global-dependencies leading to
“Domino-Effect”
 Centralisation vs. De-Centralisation vs.
“Local-Pooling”
 Dependency Analysis & Management
 Mid-Term and Long-Term Benefits over
Short-Term (Cost) Benefits
 Open Systems vs. Closed Systems
 Developing Countries
 R&D, and company strategies should target
not only performance and price but also
Photo by mactent (flickr)
resilience
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Agenda
Information & Communication Technology –
Environmental “Footprint”
Mitigation
ICT supporting
Adaptation
ICT for Teaching and Public Awareness
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Teaching and Public Awareness
 Climate change, many environmental problems,
resource depletion are
– Global issues
– Highly connected systems
– Depending on many parameters and hence
– Very difficult to Understand and Communicate
 Tools are needed to enhance the understanding of the systemic
nature of such problems, particularly for
– Teaching purpose
– Public awareness
– as Political Instrument
 IT can provide experience in modeling, visualisation, game
development to provide such tools
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Video-Game: “Makes you Think”
Taken from http://makesyouthink.net/games/climate-challenge
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Game: “Operation Climate Control”
Taken from http://www.operationclimatecontrol.co.uk
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Game: “Operation Climate Control”
Taken from http://www.operationclimatecontrol.co.uk
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Conclusion
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Despite of environmental impact of ICT, clever ICT strategies
can help to reduce much more emissions than it will produce
ICT Footprint: “direct” front-lines
– Efficient IT (Green IT)
– Target/Demand oriented IT (Cloud Computing, SAAS, ...)
– Dematerialisation effects
– Resource consumption and treatment of electronic waste
“Amplification Effects” by ICT
IT as enabler for efficiency measurements in other fields
– “Measure and Connect”
– “Green Supply Chains”: Global Optimisations, EGovernment
– Certified Processes
– Smart Houses, Grid Optimisations, Production Automation,
...
ICT supporting Adaptation (sensor networks, environmental
monitoring, modelling, search for alternatives...)
ICT for “public awareness”, teaching, politics, ...
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Institut für Softwaretechnik und Interaktive Systeme
Dr. Alexander Schatten
Senior Researcher: Vienna University of Technology
IT Consulting
www.schatten.info | [email protected] | alex_buzz (Twitter)
best-practice-software-engineering.blogspot.com
Mantra
Large Yet Unexploited Potential of ICT for SD
ICT People Welcome Interdisciplinary Projects
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