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ICT Innovations for Sustainability pp 3–36Cite as

ICT for Sustainability: An Emerging Research Field

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Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 310))

Abstract

This introductory chapter provides definitions of sustainability, sustainable development, decoupling, and related terms; gives an overview of existing interdisciplinary research fields related to ICT for Sustainability, including Environmental Informatics, Computational Sustainability, Sustainable HCI, and Green ICT; introduces a conceptual framework to structure the effects of ICT on sustainability; and provides an overview of this book.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Assuming that we intend to use the rope for the next ten years, we can specify the parameters as follows: S = rope, F = securing a climber of up to 100 kg, L = 10 years.

  2. 2.

    Carlowitz’s book is usually cited as the origin of the word “nachhaltig,” the counterpart of the English word “sustainable.”

  3. 3.

    “Governance” is defined as “all processes of governing, whether undertaken by a government, market or network, whether over a family, tribe, formal or informal organization or territory and whether through laws, norms, power or language.” [8].

  4. 4.

    In several chapters of this book, the method of LCA is applied to estimate the environmental impacts of ICT goods and services: [11–13].

  5. 5.

    How to determine which alternative—flying or videoconferencing—is preferable from the perspective of sustainability is discussed in the chapter by Coroama et al. [13] in this volume.

  6. 6.

    Fortunately, we do not need to. The market economy has an extremely useful feature that computer scientists refer to as “information hiding”: You do not have to know what is behind an interface to make use of a module. In the same way, Bob does not have to understand how a plane is operated, the airline does not have to know how planes are built, and (in theory) nobody has to worry about where the energy comes from or how the environment deals with pollutants. However, market failures and the goal of distributive justice force us to strive for a deeper understanding of the dynamics of resource use.

  7. 7.

    See also the chapter by Aebischer and Hilty [15] in this volume.

  8. 8.

    Indeed, there even exists a definition of “Computational Sustainability” built largely around this description (see Sect. 3.3).

  9. 9.

    The normative implication of this position has been called “weak sustainability”—in contrast to “strong sustainability,” which rejects the assumption that human-made capital can substitute all natural resources. The precautionary principle for dealing with uncertainty about technological risk implies a position of strong sustainability [17].

  10. 10.

    The order in which the numerator and denominator are given varies, either as ‘decoupling I 1 from I 2 ,’ e.g., “decoupling GDP growth from resource use,” [16] or as ‘decoupling I 2 from I 1 ,’ e.g., “decoupling natural resource use… from economic growth.” [14].

  11. 11.

    One might argue that there is an alternative way of decoupling, based on increasing the efficiency of production processes rather than on substitution. Increasing efficiency, however, can be regarded as substituting immaterial resources (information) for other resources. See also the chapter on interactions between information, energy, and time by D. Spreng [18] in this volume.

  12. 12.

    See the chapter “Gamification and Sustainable Consumption”, which includes a critique of persuasive technologies, in this volume [71].

  13. 13.

    EnviroInfo: Environmental Informatics (since 1986) [31], ISESS: International Symposium on Environmental Software Systems (since 1995) [32], ITEE: International Conference on Information Technologies in Environmental Engineering (since 2000) [33], iEMSs: International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software (since 2002) [34].

  14. 14.

    Although this assumption provides good guidance in many cases, it should not be taken for granted. Counterintuitive examples have been presented in LCA studies in other domains. For example, using a cotton shopping bag for ten shopping trips has a greater environmental impact than using ten plastic bags just once each [40].

  15. 15.

    The ICT applications covered by the model were as follows: “e-business, virtual mobility (telework, teleshopping, virtual meetings), virtual goods (services partially replacing material goods), ICT in waste management, intelligent transport systems, ICT in energy supply, ICT in facility management, ICT in production process management.” [65] See the chapter by Ahmadi Achachlouei and Hilty [66] in this volume for an update on the model.

  16. 16.

    It is implicitly assumed that “the problem” here is the fact that sustainable development (Definition 2) does not currently exist.

  17. 17.

    For a detailed discussion of this example, see the chapter by Coroama et al. [13] in this volume.

  18. 18.

    Consumption processes are often similar to production processes, and can be viewed as “household production” (except for the last step, i.e., the consumption of the final good or service). For example, when baking a cake, a consumer transforms commodities purchased on the market into the final good, which is then consumed.

  19. 19.

    Note that this terminology differs from that introduced in Sect. 4.1, which treats optimization and substitution as distinct concepts. In the LES model, process optimization is instead regarded as a special type of substitution.

  20. 20.

    Examples of such assessments are given in the chapters by Coroama et al. [13] and by Hischier and Wäger [12] in this volume.

  21. 21.

    Note that we are not claiming that this is the only mechanism that can promote obsolescence, but it is the one most likely to occur as an impact of ICT. This impact is not restricted to ICT devices but can also affect other products with embedded ICT (e.g., a blind control system).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Lorenz M. Hilty

  2. Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Lorenz M. Hilty

  3. Centre for Sustainable Communications CESC, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

    Lorenz M. Hilty

  4. Zurich, Switzerland

    Bernard Aebischer

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  1. Department of Informatics, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Lorenz M. Hilty

  2. Zurich, Switzerland

    Bernard Aebischer

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Hilty, L.M., Aebischer, B. (2015). ICT for Sustainability: An Emerging Research Field. In: Hilty, L., Aebischer, B. (eds) ICT Innovations for Sustainability. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 310. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09228-7_1

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