Energy Saving In Data Centers

Globally CO2 emissions attributable to Information Technology are on par with those resulting from aviation. Recent growth in cloud service demand has elevated energy efficiency of data centers to a critical area within green computing. Cloud computing represents a backbone of IT services and recently there has been an increase in high-definition multimedia delivery, which has placed new burdens on energy resources. Hardware innovations together with energy-efficient techniques and algorithms are key to controlling power usage in an ever-expanding IT landscape. This special issue contains a number of contributions that show that data center energy efficiency should be addressed from diverse vantage points. © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

Toward sustainable data centers: a comprehensive energy management strategy

Data centers are major contributors to the emission of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and this contribution is expected to increase in the following years. This has encouraged the development of techniques to reduce the energy consumption and the environmental footprint of data centers. Whereas some of these techniques have succeeded to reduce the energy consumption of the hardware equipment of data centers (including IT, cooling, and power supply systems), we claim that sustainable data centers will be only possible if the problem is faced by means of a holistic approach that includes not only the aforementioned techniques but also intelligent and unifying solutions that enable a synergistic and energy-aware management of data centers. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive strategy to reduce the carbon footprint of data centers that uses the energy as a driver of their management procedures. In addition, we present a holistic management architecture for sustainable data centers that implements the aforementioned strategy, and we propose design guidelines to accomplish each step of the proposed strategy, referring to related achievements and enumerating the main challenges that must be still solved.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Scenarios for Educational and Game Activities using Internet of Things Data

Raising awareness among young people and changing their behavior and habits concerning energy usage and the environment is key to achieving a sustainable planet. The goal to address the global climate problem requires informing the population on their roles in mitigation actions and adaptation of sustainable behaviors. Addressing climate change and achieve ambitious energy and climate targets requires a change in citizen behavior and consumption practices. IoT sensing and related scenario and practices, which address school children via discovery, gamification, and educational activities, are examined in this paper. Use of seawater sensors in STEM education, that has not previously been addressed, is included in these educational scenaria

Empowering citizens' cognition and decision making in smart sustainable cities

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Advances in Internet technologies have made it possible to gather, store, and process large quantities of data, often in real time. When considering smart and sustainable cities, this big data generates useful information and insights to citizens, service providers, and policy makers. Transforming this data into knowledge allows for empowering citizens' cognition as well as supporting decision-making routines. However, several operational and computing issues need to be taken into account: 1) efficient data description and visualization, 2) forecasting citizens behavior, and 3) supporting decision making with intelligent algorithms. This paper identifies several challenges associated with the use of data analytics in smart sustainable cities and proposes the use of hybrid simulation-optimization and machine learning algorithms as an effective approach to empower citizens' cognition and decision making in such ecosystemsPeer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A Discussion of Thin Client Technology for Computer Labs

Computer literacy is not negotiable for any professional in an increasingly computerised environment. Educational institutions should be equipped to provide this new basic training for modern life. Accordingly, computer labs are an essential medium for education in almost any field. Computer labs are one of the most popular IT infrastructures for technical training in primary and secondary schools, universities and other educational institutions all over the world. Unfortunately, a computer lab is expensive, in terms of both initial purchase and annual maintenance costs, and especially when we want to run the latest software. Hence, research efforts addressing computer lab efficiency, performance or cost reduction would have a worldwide repercussion. In response to this concern, this paper presents a survey on thin client technology for computer labs in educational environments. Besides setting out the advantages and drawbacks of this technology, we aim to refute false prejudices against thin clients, identifying a set of educational scenarios where thin clients are a better choice and others requiring traditional solutions

Alternate endings: using fiction to explore design futures

Design research and practice within HCI is inherently oriented toward the future. However, the vision of the future described by HCI researchers and practitioners is typically utility-driven and focuses on the short term. It rarely acknowledges the potentially complex social and psychological long-term consequences of the technology artefacts produced. Thus, it has the potential to unintentionally cause real harm. Drawing on scholarship that investigates the link between fiction and design, this workshop will explore “alternate endings” to contemporary HCI papers. Attendees will use fictional narratives to envision long-term consequences of contemporary HCI projects, as a means for engaging the CHI community in a consideration of the values and implications of interactive technology

Using qualitative models to define sustainable management for the commons in data poor conditions

Acknowledgments This work was funded by the University of Aberdeen and Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) and their support is gratefully acknowledged. We thank MASTS (the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland) for their role in funding this work and B. Leyshon and F. Manson (SNH) for fruitful discussion.Peer reviewedPostprin