GI leads development project for automated assessment of sustainable software
The project "Enabling green COmputing and DIGItal Transformation" (ECO:DIGIT), funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, has commenced.
Berlin, 01/08/2023 - The project "Enabling green COmputing and DIGItal Transformation" (ECO:DIGIT) officially kicks off with the aim of developing an assessment environment for software or cloud applications that transparently discloses comprehensive information about resource consumption and environmental impacts. The project is funded as part of the GreenTech Innovation Competition by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK).
As part of the project, an evaluation method is being developed to determine the significant environmental impacts of software applications, particularly in the cloud sector. Suitable indicators for measuring resource consumption and CO2 equivalent emissions are being established. These indicators include, for example, the power consumption of the working environment, the utilization of hardware resources, and the amount of raw materials and chemicals used in hardware manufacturing. Additionally, the method development includes an appropriate form of presenting the environmental impacts of software applications using metrics.
An overarching goal of the ECO:DIGIT project is to establish transparency, objectivity, and standardization in the evaluation of resource consumption of software solutions. The developed test environment will be platform-independent and capable of considering both mobile apps and desktop applications as well as distributed systems and cloud-native applications.
"We are pleased to announce the launch of the ECO:DIGIT project and hope that the automated assessment environment will make a significant contribution to the promotion of sustainable software applications," says Nikolas Becker, Head of Policy & Science at the Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.. "By disclosing resource consumption, companies and developers will be empowered to optimize their software solutions systematically and enable more sustainable technology use. At the same time, it provides users the opportunity to compare various providers and applications based on their environmental impacts."
"Knowledge about resource consumption brings added value to all CEOs, CIOs, CDOs, and CFOs, as well as their respective communication and controlling departments, supervisory boards, and shareholders of a company that has digitized its business processes," adds Maria Bauer, Program Manager Sustainable Monitoring at the Open Source Business Alliance e.V.. "The societal value of the ECO:DIGIT project lies particularly in releasing ECO:DIGIT developments under OSI-compliant open-source licenses and integrating them into the reference implementation of the Sovereign Cloud Stack. The monitoring tool is thus available to every Cloud Service Provider (CSP) offering services based on SCS. The CSP can offer its customers the service of measuring, assessing, and optimizing the impacts of the software they use themselves."
