• Energy Research

Information and communication technologies are increasingly pervasive in our everyday lives. Their use has greatly evolved from an ancillary service to a component of all our activities, anytime, anywhere. To this aim, we rely heavily on cloud computing and, more recently, on edge computing. Hence, their contribution (or obstruction) to the sustainability of our society at large is pivotal. Unfortunately, cloud/edge provisioning has a dark side: it too often prioritizes economic gain over the cost of long-lasting sustainability. Also, sustainability is often absent from the discussions in the cloud/edge research community. To start the discussion and highlight a number of sustainability shortcomings of the cloud and edge computing paradigms, we carry out an exploratory study involving experts-in-the-field, capture their inputs in the form of so-called unsustainable patterns, and complement them with examples of possible countermeasures. The results of our study include: (i) the definition of a Pattern Model, (ii) a catalog of unsustainable patterns for the cloud and edge computing paradigms, and (iii) the identification of preliminary countermeasures and takeaways in order to make these two paradigms more sustainable.

Software Ecosystems (SECO) is defined as a set of actors that function as a unit and their relationships and interactions with a distributed market between software and services. In this context, transparency is a key coordination mechanism for ecosystem actors because the availability of information enables them to be aware of the evolution of development activities, which is pivotal to sustainability in SECOs. However, there is an absence of SECO studies approaching sustainability issues. Therefore, exploring and analyzing SECOs based on a transparency perspective is a good opportunity to start discussing the impacts of sustainability initiatives in SECOs. As such, this study aims to express transparency as a sustainability goal in SECOs in a systematic way. To do so, we propose an approach that uses decision maps to make sustainability-driven decisions considering the transparency of SECO information and processes. Decision maps allow for an overview of relationships between SECO features or requirements and transparency concerns, which facilitate identifying and discussing transparency and sustainability issues in SECOs. The proposed approach is illustrated through a proof of concept with the analysis of two real SECOs: SOLAR 2.0 and IDUFF. As implications for academia and industry, researchers can find in this work an initial discussion of sustainability issues in SECOs based on the concept of transparency. Practitioners can find an approach to model relationships between transparency and sustainability in SECOs, which facilitates understanding the impacts on each other during decision-making.

The intersection between software engineering research and the problems related to sustainability and green IT has been the subject of increasing attention. In spite of that, we observe that sustainability is still not clearly defined, or understood, in the field of software engineering. This lack of clarity leads to confusion about e.g. what is relevant to measure or the research implications over time or space. This paper provides an overview of how the research so far has defined sustainability, and how this definition has been used to guide which research areas. To this end, we carried out a systematic mapping study for selecting, classifying and analyzing relevant publications. In this study, we investigate which knowledge areas and which time scope of sustainability effects are mostly targeted in scientific research. Our analysis shows research trends and discusses gaps to be filled.

Background:Digital infrastructures, i.e., ICT systems, or system-of-systems, providing digital capabilities, such as storage and computational services, are experiencing an ever-growing demand for data consumption, which is only expected to increase in the future. This trend leads to a question we need to answer: How can we evolve digital infrastructures to keep up with the increasing data demand in a sustainable way?Objective:The goal of this study is to understand what is the future of sustainable digital infrastructures, in terms of: which solutions are, or will be, available to sustainably evolve digital infrastructures, and which are the related adoption factors, impediments, and open problems.Method:We carried out a 3-phase mixed-method qualitative empirical study, comprising semi-structured interviews, followed by focus groups, and a plenary session with parallel working groups. In total, we conducted 13 sessions involving 48 digital infrastructure practitioners and researchers.Results:From our investigation emerges a landscape for sustainable digital infrastructures, composed of 30 solutions, 5 adoption factors, 4 impediments, and 13 open problems. We further synthesized our results in 4 incremental scenarios, which outline the future evolution of sustainable digital infrastructures.Conclusions:From an initial shift from on-premise to the cloud, as time progresses, digital infrastructures are expected to become increasingly distributed, till it will be possible to dynamically allocate resources by following time, space, and energy. Numerous solutions will support this change, but digital infrastructures are envisaged to be able to evolve sustainably only by (i) gaining a wider awareness of digital sustainability, (ii) holding every party accountable for their sustainability throughout value chains, and (iii) establishing cross-domain collaborations.

In the last years, software engineering researchers have defined sustainability as a quality requirement of software, but not enough effort has been devoted to develop new methods/techniques to support the analysis and assessment of software sustainability. In this study, we present the Sustainability Assessment Framework (SAF) that consists of two instruments: the software sustainability–quality model, and the architectural decision map. Then, we use participatory and technical action research in close collaboration with the software industry to validate the SAF regarding its applicability in specific cases. The unit of analysis of our study is a family of software products (Geographic Information System- and Mobile-based Workforce Management Systems) that aim to address sustainability goals (e.g., efficient collection of dead animals to mitigate social and environmental sustainability risks). The results show that the sustainability–quality model integrated with the architectural decision maps can be used to identify sustainability–quality requirements as design concerns because most of its quality attributes (QAs) have been either addressed in the software project or acknowledged as relevant (i.e., creating awareness on the relevance of the multidimensional sustainability nature of certain QAs). Moreover, the action–research method has been helpful to enrich the sustainability–quality model, by identifying missing QAs (e.g., regulation compliance, data privacy). Finally, the architectural decision maps have been found as useful to guide software architects/designers in their decision-making process.

Software producing organizations have the ability to address the energy impact of their ICT solutions during the development process. However, while industry is convinced of the energy impact of hardware, the role of software has mostly been acknowledged by researchers in software engineering. Strengthened by the limited practical knowledge to reduce the energy consumption, organizations have less control over the energy impact of their products and lose the contribution of software towards energy related strategies. Consequently, industry risks not being able to meet customer requirements or even fulfillcorporate sustainability goals. In this paper we perform an exploratory case study on how to create and maintain awareness on an energy consumption perspective for software among stakeholders involved with the development of software products. During the study, we followed the development process of two commercial software products and provided direct feedback to the stakeholders on the effects of their development efforts, specifically concerning energy consumption and performance, using an energy dashboard. Multiple awareness measurements allowed us to keep track of changes over time on specific aspects affecting software development. Our results show that, despite a mixed sentiment towards the dashboard, changed awareness has triggered discussion on the energy consumption of software.

Internet connectivity is seamlessly integrated into many of our everyday habits and activities. Despite this, previous research has highlighted that our rather excessive Internet use is not sustainable or even always socially beneficial. In this paper, we carried out an exploratory study on how Internet disconnection affects our everyday lives and whether such disconnection is even possible in today’s society. Through daily surveys, we captured what Internet use means for ten participants and how this varies when they are asked to disconnect by default, and re-connect only when their Internet use is deemed as necessary. From our study, we found that our participants could disconnect from the Internet for certain activities (particularly leisure focused), yet they developed adaptations in their lives to address the necessity of their Internet use. We elicit these adaptations into five themes that encompass how the participants did, or did not, use the Internet based on their necessities. Drawing on these five themes, we conclude with ways in which our study can inspire future research surrounding: Internet infrastructure limits; the promotion of slow values; Internet non-use; and the undesign of Internet services.