Harnessing Green It

“Ultimately, this is a remarkable book, a practical testimonial, and a comprehensive bibliography rolled into one. It is a single, bright sword cut across the various murky green IT topics. And if my mistakes and lessons learned through the green IT journey are any indication, this book will be used every day by folks interested in greening IT.” — Simon Y. Liu, Ph.D. & Ed.D., Editor-in-Chief, IT Professional Magazine, IEEE Computer Society, Director, U.S. National Agricultural Library This book presents a holistic perspective on Green IT by discussing its various facets and showing how to strategically embrace it Harnessing Green IT: Principles and Practices examines various ways of making computing and information systems greener – environmentally sustainable -, as well as several means of using Information Technology (IT) as a tool and an enabler to improve the environmental sustainability. The book focuses on both greening of IT and greening by IT – complimentary approaches to attaining environmental sustainability. In a single volume, it comprehensively covers several key aspects of Green IT - green technologies, design, standards, maturity models, strategies and adoption -, and presents a clear approach to greening IT encompassing green use, green disposal, green design, and green manufacturing. It also illustrates how to strategically apply green IT in practice in several areas. Key Features: Presents a comprehensive coverage of key topics of importance and practical relevance - green technologies, design, standards, maturity models, strategies and adoption Highlights several useful approaches to embracing green IT in several areas Features chapters written by accomplished experts from industry and academia who have first-hand knowledge and expertise in specific areas of green IT Presents a set of review and discussion questions for each chapter that will help the readers to examine and explore the green IT domain further Includes a companion website providing resources for further information and presentation slides This book will be an invaluable resource for IT Professionals, academics, students, researchers, project leaders/managers, IT business executives, CIOs, CTOs and anyone interested in Green IT and harnessing it to enhance our environment.

The world is addressing the insistent challenge of climate change, and the need for innovative solutions has become paramount. In this period of technical developments, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful instrument with enormous prospects to combat climate change and other environmental subjects. AI's ability to process vast amounts of data, identify patterns, and make intelligent predictions offers unprecedented opportunities to tackle this global crisis. High-Performance Computing (HPC) or super-computing environments address these large and complex challenges with individual nodes (computers) working together in a cluster (connected group) to perform massive amounts of computing in a short period. Creating and removing these clusters is often automated in the cloud to reduce costs. Computer networks, communication systems, and other IT infrastructures have a growing environmental footprint due to significant energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. To address this seemingly self-defeating conundrum, and create a truly sustainable environment, new energy models, algorithms, methodologies, platforms, tools, and systems are required to support next-generation computing and communication infrastructures. Harnessing High-Performance Computing and AI for Environmental Sustainability navigates through AI-driven solutions from sustainable agriculture and land management to energy optimization and smart grids. It unveils how AI algorithms can analyze colossal datasets, offering unprecedented insights into climate modeling, weather prediction, and long-term climate trends. Integrating AI-powered optimization algorithms revolutionizes energy systems, propelling the transition towards a low-carbon future by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing efficiency. This book is ideal for educators, environmentalists, industry professionals, and researchers alike, and it explores the ethical dimensions and policies surrounding AI's contribution to environmental development.

During the last three decades, information and communication technologies have fundamentally changed the way we work, live and communicate. The ubiquity of internet services, which become increasingly interactive and complex, together with enhanced connectivity, facilitated by innovative mobile devices, induces an ever-rising demand for computing, storage and data transmission capacities. Today, information systems (IS) constitute the backbone of the globalized economy and are indispensable for modern business and production processes. At the same time, environmental sustainability has evolved as the most pressing societal challenge of the 21st century, in particular due to the looming threats of climate change. By virtue of their global influence and reach, business companies significantly contribute to the creation of environmental problems, but owing to their organizational knowledge, capabilities and resources, they also have the capacity and ability to play a key role in shaping the path towards a more sustainable development. The companies leading the way have noticed that corporate sustainability is not necessarily a burden that negatively impacts their bottom line. If strategically managed, environmental product and process innovations can decrease operational costs, enhance corporate reputation, and differentiate from competitors. With regard to environmental sustainability, IS play a contradictory role: on the one hand, the manufacturing, operation and disposal of information technology (IT) infrastructure are responsible for serious environmental impacts: from the mining of conflict minerals to carbon dioxide emissions that equal those of the airline industry to enormous amounts of toxic e-waste. On the other hand, IS are perceived as key enablers of a "green" economy: environmental management systems and the reengineering of business processes can substantially reduce the environmental impacts of business organizations, while technological innovations provide opportunities to decrease the ecological footprint of end-user products and services. Many organizations have started to implement first environmental measures to decrease IT energy consumption and to reduce operational costs, mostly in an unstructured and uncoordinated manner though. Although Green IS practices feature a considerable potential to increase corporate environmentalism while creating promising business opportunities, the adoption of enterprise-wide cross-functional initiatives aimed at implementing Green IS has been rather slow. Economic uncertainties regarding the long-term effects of Green IS adoption and the lack of appropriate management frameworks have been identified as main inhibitors of an encompassing implementation of Green IS initiatives throughout the enterprise. In this context, this thesis addresses relevant research gaps, contributes to theory development in the evolving Green IS research discipline, develops practice-oriented management frameworks, and emphasizes the importance of following a strategic approach to leverage the competitive potential of Green IS. This cumulative thesis comprises an introduction that includes a literature review and a pre-study, four theory-based conceptual research articles, and two empirical studies, one of them building on qualitative, exploratory case study research whereas the other relies on quantitative data which has been analyzed with structural equation modeling. This thesis targets four specific research goals to advance theory-building in Green IS research and to promote the adoption of Green IS in practice. First, this thesis clarifies and defines the central terms and key concepts Green IT, Green IS, Green IS strategy, and Green IS practices drawing on a transdisciplinary research approach. Second, the most important challenges and inhibitors of Green IS adoption are identified and characterized. In particular, the lack of management frameworks, which encourage a holistic implementation that follows a strategic rationale, the complexity of strategic Green IS alignment, the multi-dimensional performance impacts of cross-functional initiatives and, above all, the uncertainty relating to the business case of Green IS practices, are identified as the most pressing challenges. Third, current actions of business firms to address these challenges are examined. Building on exploratory case study research, distinctive Green IS strategies are identified in managerial practice. Most notably, the empirical insights from quantitative survey research suggest a positive relationship between Green IS adoption and firm competitiveness, thus decreasing the economic uncertainty which inhibits the implementation of far-reaching environmental initiatives. Fourth, practice-oriented management frameworks are developed. The fine-grained Green IS strategy concept advises the formulation of strategies addressing the corporate, competitive, and functional management level. The proposed typology of four Green IS strategies illustrates distinct strategic options, from which executives can choose under consideration of their competitive targets and the firm-specific context. To allow for consistency of Green IS strategies, the presented alignment framework facilitates coherence with economic and environmental corporate goals. Furthermore, the actors, roles and responsibilities relevant to the alignment process are described. In addition, a management framework for the holistic adoption of Green IS, which specifies decisive management areas and distinguishes between three degrees of environmental impacts, is presented along with a comprehensive catalogue of Green IS implementation measures. As a consequence, this research offers both empirical insights and conceptual models to advance the adoption of Green IS initiatives, thus meeting the challenges of climate change and turning corporate sustainability into a business opportunity. Informationssysteme (IS) zeigen in Bezug auf ökologische Nachhaltigkeit gegensätzliche Eigenschaften. Einerseits verursachen die Herstellung, der Betrieb sowie die Entsorgung von Informationstechnologie (IT) – Infrastrukturen schwerwiegende negative Umweltauswirkungen: Vom Abbau von Konfliktmineralien über Kohlendioxidemissionen bis hin zu beträchtlichen Mengen giftigen Elektroschrotts. Andererseits werden IS als Schlüsseltechnologien für eine nachhaltige Wirtschaft gesehen. Umweltmanagementsysteme und die Umgestaltung von Geschäftsprozessen können den ökologischen Fußabdruck von Organisationen bedeutend verringern. Zudem eröffnen technologische Innovationen neuartige Möglichkeiten, die Umweltauswirkungen von Produkten und Dienstleistungen über den gesamten Lebenszyklus hinweg zu senken. Zahlreiche Organisationen haben damit begonnen, einzelne Green-IT-Maßnahmen zu implementieren um den Energieverbrauch und operative Kosten zu senken. Allerdings verfolgen die meisten Unternehmen hierbei keinen strukturierten oder strategischen Ansatz. Obwohl Green-IS-Initiativen beachtliche Potentiale zur Verbesserung der ökologischen Nachhaltigkeit von Organisationen bieten und gleichzeitig vielversprechende wirtschaftliche Chancen eröffnen, schreitet die Umsetzung von bereichsübergreifenden Green-IS-Maßnahmen in Unternehmen nur langsam voran. Ökonomische Unsicherheiten in Bezug auf die Rentabilität derartiger Maßnahmen sowie der Mangel an adäquaten Management-Frameworks werden in diesem Zusammenhang als zentrale Hinderungsgründe für eine strategische und ganzheitliche Umsetzung von Green-IS-Initiativen identifiziert. Diese Dissertation adressiert diese Hinderungsgründe, schafft Schlüsselkonzepte für den neuen Green-IS-Forschungszweig, entwickelt praxisorientierte Management-Frameworks und hebt die Bedeutung eines strategischen Ansatzes bei der Implementierung von Green IS hervor. Diese Forschungsarbeit offeriert empirische Einblicke wie auch konzeptionelle Modelle um die Umsetzung ganzheitlicher Green-IS-Initiativen in Organisationen voranzutreiben. Unternehmen haben somit die Chance, den Herausforderungen des Klimawandels verantwortungsvoll zu begegnen und gleichzeitig durch eine nachhaltige Unternehmensführung Wettbewerbsvorteile zu generieren.

This book features a selection of articles from The 2019 International Conference on Information Technology & Systems (ICITS’19), held at the Universidad de Las Fuerzas Armadas, in Quito, Ecuador, on 6th to 8th February 2019. ICIST is a global forum for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss recent findings and innovations, current trends, professional experiences and challenges of modern information technology and systems research, together with their technological development and applications. The main topics covered are: information and knowledge management; organizational models and information systems; software and systems modeling; software systems, architectures, applications and tools; multimedia systems and applications; computer networks, mobility and pervasive systems; intelligent and decision support systems; big data analytics and applications; human–computer interaction; ethics, computers & security; health informatics; information technologies in education; cybersecurity and cyber-defense; electromagnetics, sensors and antennas for security.

Harnessing Foreign Investment to Promote Environmental Protection investigates the main challenges facing the implementation of environmental protection and the synergies between foreign investment and environmental protection. Adopting legal, economic and political perspectives, the contributing authors analyse the various incentives which encourage foreign investment into pro-environment projects (such as funds, project-finance, market mechanisms, payments-for-ecosystem services and insurance) and the safeguards against its potentially harmful effects (investment regulation, CSR and accountability mechanisms, contracts and codes of conduct).

Essential Computer and it Fundamentals for Engineering And S

Addresses innovations in technology relating to the energy efficiency of a wide variety of contemporary computer systems and networks With concerns about global energy consumption at an all-time high, improving computer networks energy efficiency is becoming an increasingly important topic. Large-Scale Distributed Systems and Energy Efficiency: A Holistic View addresses innovations in technology relating to the energy efficiency of a wide variety of contemporary computer systems and networks. After an introductory overview of the energy demands of current Information and Communications Technology (ICT), individual chapters offer in-depth analyses of such topics as cloud computing, green networking (both wired and wireless), mobile computing, power modeling, the rise of green data centers and high-performance computing, resource allocation, and energy efficiency in peer-to-peer (P2P) computing networks. Discusses measurement and modeling of the energy consumption method Includes methods for energy consumption reduction in diverse computing environments Features a variety of case studies and examples of energy reduction and assessment Timely and important, Large-Scale Distributed Systems and Energy Efficiency is an invaluable resource for ways of increasing the energy efficiency of computing systems and networks while simultaneously reducing the carbon footprint.

Green Blockchain Technology for Sustainable Smart Cities presents a detailed exploration of the adaptation and implementation of green blockchain technology for sustainable and eco-friendly smart city applications. This book covers all aspects of the topic and explores smart cities ecosystem applications of blockchain technology. Novel architectural and business blockchain use case solutions in smart city implementations are at the core of this book, which will be beneficial for all researchers, engineers, graduate students, smart city practitioners, and city administrators who are engaged in green blockchain and smart cities-related technologies. Covers a wide variety of topics Offers readers multiple perspectives from a variety of disciplines Written by an internationally diverse group of experts in their respective fields Includes a section on use cases as well as current challenges and future directions