TY - CHAP

T1 - Including software aspects in green IT

T2 - How to create awareness for green software issues

AU - Kern, Eva

AU - Guldner, Achim

AU - Naumann, Stefan

PY - 2019

Y1 - 2019

N2 - While counteracting the increasing demand for natural resources and especially energy of ICT, first successes have become apparent by activities comprised by the term “Green IT”. Nowadays, many of the current activities lay emphasis on the hardware side of Green IT. However, software issues play a significant role in defining system and hardware requirements as well as the amount of energy consumed by ICT devices and the underlying infrastructure. Thus, the following chapter introduces the idea of green software and its engineering. Complementary to definitions and models in the addressed field, a more practical insight is given by illustrating exemplary energy measurements of software products. While these aspects show that the research is increasingly dealing with software issues of Green IT, these mainly scientific ideas have hardly reached practical relevance, so far. Hence, following the life cycle perspective of software products, we present two exemplary concepts on how to increase awareness of green software: addressing especially software engineers, we propose to implement continuous energy efficiency measurements during the development phase. With regards to software users, we propose to create an eco-label for software products to inform about their environmental issues and thus create more transparency in this context. To do so, we present and evaluate criteria and indicators, upon which a label could be based. The chapter concludes with a summary and proposes future activities in the addressed field. Overall, the aim of the chapter is to point out solutions that might lead to a more environmentally friendly way of developing software, a well-informed procurement behavior regarding software products, and a more sustainable user behavior concerning ICT.

AB - While counteracting the increasing demand for natural resources and especially energy of ICT, first successes have become apparent by activities comprised by the term “Green IT”. Nowadays, many of the current activities lay emphasis on the hardware side of Green IT. However, software issues play a significant role in defining system and hardware requirements as well as the amount of energy consumed by ICT devices and the underlying infrastructure. Thus, the following chapter introduces the idea of green software and its engineering. Complementary to definitions and models in the addressed field, a more practical insight is given by illustrating exemplary energy measurements of software products. While these aspects show that the research is increasingly dealing with software issues of Green IT, these mainly scientific ideas have hardly reached practical relevance, so far. Hence, following the life cycle perspective of software products, we present two exemplary concepts on how to increase awareness of green software: addressing especially software engineers, we propose to implement continuous energy efficiency measurements during the development phase. With regards to software users, we propose to create an eco-label for software products to inform about their environmental issues and thus create more transparency in this context. To do so, we present and evaluate criteria and indicators, upon which a label could be based. The chapter concludes with a summary and proposes future activities in the addressed field. Overall, the aim of the chapter is to point out solutions that might lead to a more environmentally friendly way of developing software, a well-informed procurement behavior regarding software products, and a more sustainable user behavior concerning ICT.

KW - Informatics

KW - Green software

KW - Green software development

KW - Energy measurements

KW - Environment

KW - Eco-label

KW - Energy efficiency

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85054170749&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-00253-4_1

DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-00253-4_1

M3 - Contributions to collected editions/anthologies

AN - SCOPUS:85054170749

SN - 978-3-030-00252-7

T3 - Studies in Systems, Decision and Control

SP - 3

EP - 20

BT - Green IT Engineering

A2 - Kharchenko, Vyacheslav

A2 - Kondratenko, Yuriy

A2 - Kacprzyk, Janusz

PB - Springer International Publishing AG

CY - Cham

ER -