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ICT4S Conference: 14-16 February 2013, Zurich

Published Feb 29, 2012

ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S) is about utilizing the tranformational power of ICT for making the world more sustainable. As partner to the organizing team, CESC welcomes to this high-level conference which covers a broad spectrum of research questions within the field of sustainable communications.

CALL FOR PAPERS

1st International Conference on
“ICT for Sustainability”
(ICT4S 2013)

ETH Zurich, Switzerland
14-16 February 2013

www.ict4s.org

Background and Objectives

“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 ICTs’ contribution to sustainability has been increasingly
recognized during the last decades, implementing this potential has proven to
be a challenge.

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.

Invited Speakers

Pierre-Alain Graf, CEO Swissgrid
Robert Madelin, Director General, European Commission DG INFSO (tentative)
Jennifer Mankoff, Prof., Carnegie Mellon University
Daniel Spreng, Prof. em., ETH Zurich

Topics

Topics include, but are not limited to:

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 behavioral changes, empowering the ‘green’
consumer with information, supporting design for sustainability
- Other enabling effects of ICT for sustainability:
Other effects of ICT as an enabler of sustainable development may be
addressed as well

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

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

Audience

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.

For submission details and further information see the conference website .