Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Conference website
'ICT for sustainability' is about utilizing the transformational power of
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for making our world more
sustainable: saving energy and material resources by creating more value from
less physical input, increasing quality of life for ever more people without
compromising future generations' ability to meet their needs. While the
potential of ICT's contribution to sustainability has been increasingly
recognized during the last decades, realizing this potential has proven to be
a challenge.
Objective
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The ICT4S conference aims to bring together leading researchers from the
technical, natural and social science disciplines:
* to take stock of the role of ICT in sustainability and to improve the
methods of measuring the positive and negative effects of ICT;
* to create an interdisciplinary synopsis, to inspire new approaches to
unleash the potential of ICT for sustainability in various fields of
application, from production to consumption;
* to improve methodologies of evaluating, developing, and governing the
effects of ICT systems on the sustainability of societal and environmental
systems.
Audience
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The ICT4S conference will bring together leading researchers in ICT for
Sustainability with government and industry leaders. Decision-makers with an
interest in using ICT for sustainability, researchers focusing on ICT effects
on sustainability and developers of sustainable ICT systems or applications
should attend this conference.
Topics
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Topic 1: Sustainability through ICT
- ICT for Energy Management and Planning:
ICT for energy efficiency, smart energy systems, smart grids, smart
metering, ICT and renewables
- ICT and Dematerialization:
ICT for material efficiency, ICT-supported life cycle thinking, ICT and
product-service systems, smart recycling
- Sustainability in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI):
Creating awareness, supporting behavioural changes, empowering the 'green'
consumer with information, supporting design for sustainability
- Other enabling effects of ICT for sustainability
Topic 2: Sustainability in ICT
- Energy flows induced by ICT and how to reduce their impact:
Energy use in the life cycle of ICT hardware, energy consumption of data
centers, decentralized and renewable power generation for ICT, energy
harvesting, energy-aware and energy-autonomous systems
- Material flows induced by ICT and how to reduce their impact:
Scarce resources used for ICT hardware, electronic waste (e-waste, WEEE),
recycling technologies and schemes, environmental and social impacts of
ICT-related material flows, future electronics
- Green Design and Green Software:
Measuring resource consumption at the level of ICT functions and services,
implications of software architecture on hardware load, the potential of
software to save hardware resources, sustainability in software
engineering, resource-aware software, price transparency in the ICT sector
Topic 3: Economic and Political Dimensions
- Rebound effects and how to avoid them:
ICT-induced efficiency and rebound effects, history of ICT-related rebound
effects, theories and models of rebound effects, rebound effects vs.
intended growth, political frameworks for avoiding rebound effects
- Energy markets:
Role of ICT in the deregulation of electricity markets, ICT and dynamic
prices, electronic energy markets, enabling political frameworks for smart
energy use
- Economics of ICT hardware:
Supply security of the resources used in ICT, geopolitical aspects of
critical metals, economics of e-waste recycling, world commodity markets and
ICT
Contributions and Publication
-----------------------------
The conference will consist of invited lectures, submitted papers, and
workshops. The call for papers will be announced towards the end of
January 2012. Abstracts will be due by June 1, 2012, and full papers (due by
September 1, 2012) will be subject to peer review before final acceptance.
Accepted full papers will be published in an e-book provided to conference
participants. A selection of speakers and authors will be encouraged to
submit an extended version of their contributions to an edited volume and/or
a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal after the conference.
Important Dates
---------------
End of January 2012 : Call for Papers
June 1, 2012 : Abstracts
September 1, 2012 : Full papers
February 14-16, 2013 : Conference
Organizers
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* Dr. Bernard Aebischer, Zurich
* ETH Zurich, Energy Science Center, Prof. Goran Andersson,
Prof. Thomas F. Rutherford
* University of Zurich, Department of Informatics:
Informatics and Sustainability Research (ISR) Group, Prof. Lorenz M. Hilty;
Zurich People and Computing (ZPAC) Lab, Prof. Elaine Huang
* Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology,
Technology and Society Lab, Dr. Wolfgang Lohmann
