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Computing Research for Sustainability (2012)

Chapter: Front Matter

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Computing Research for Sustainability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13415.
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COMPUTING RESEARCH
FOR SUSTAINABILITY







Lynette I. Millett and Deborah L. Estrin, Editors

Committee on Computing Research for
Environmental and Societal Sustainability

Computer Science and Telecommunications Board

Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES




THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
Washington, DC.
www.nap.edu

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Computing Research for Sustainability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13415.
×

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS   500 Fifth Street, NW   Washington, DC 20001

NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.

Support for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation under award 115-0950451. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organization that provided support for the project.

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-25758-9
International Standard Book Number-10: 0-309-25758-1

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Copyright 2012 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Computing Research for Sustainability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13415.
×

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES

Advisers to the Nation on Science, Engineering, and Medicine

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone is president of the National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Charles M. Vest is president of the National Academy of Engineering.

The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg is president of the Institute of Medicine.

The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy’s purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone and Dr. Charles M. Vest are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the National Research Council.

www.national-academies.org

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Computing Research for Sustainability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13415.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Computing Research for Sustainability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13415.
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COMMITTEE ON COMPUTING RESEARCH FOR ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIETAL SUSTAINABILITY

DEBORAH L. ESTRIN, University of California, Los Angeles, Chair

ALAN BORNING, University of Washington

DAVID CULLER, University of California, Berkeley

THOMAS DIETTERICH, Oregon State University

DANIEL KAMMEN, University of California, Berkeley

JENNIFER MANKOFF, Carnegie Mellon University

ROGER D. PENG, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

ANDREAS VOGEL, SAP Labs

Staff

LYNETTE I. MILLETT, Senior Program Officer

VIRGINIA BACON TALATI, Associate Program Officer

SHENAE BRADLEY, Senior Program Assistant

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Computing Research for Sustainability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13415.
×

COMPUTER SCIENCE AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS BOARD

ROBERT F. SPROULL, Oracle (retired), Chair

PRITHVIRAJ BANERJEE, ABB

STEVEN M. BELLOVIN, Columbia University

JACK L. GOLDSMITH III, Harvard Law School

SEYMOUR E. GOODMAN, Georgia Institute of Technology

JON M. KLEINBERG, Cornell University

ROBERT KRAUT, Carnegie Mellon University

SUSAN LANDAU, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study

PETER LEE, Microsoft Corporation

DAVID LIDDLE, U.S. Venture Partners

DAVID E. SHAW, D.E. Shaw Research

ALFRED Z. SPECTOR, Google, Inc.

JOHN STANKOVIC, University of Virginia

JOHN SWAINSON, Silver Lake Partners

PETER SZOLOVITS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

PETER J. WEINBERGER, Google, Inc.

ERNEST J. WILSON, University of Southern California

KATHERINE YELICK, University of California, Berkeley

Staff

JON EISENBERG, Director

RENEE HAWKINS, Financial and Administrative Manager

HERBERT S. LIN, Chief Scientist

LYNETTE I. MILLETT, Senior Program Officer

EMILY ANN MEYER, Program Officer

VIRGINIA BACON TALATI, Associate Program Officer

ENITA A. WILLIAMS, Associate Program Officer

SHENAE BRADLEY, Senior Program Assistant

ERIC WHITAKER, Senior Program Assistant

For more information on CSTB, see its web site at http://www.cstb.org, write to CSTB, National Research Council, 500 Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001, call (202) 334-2605, or e-mail the CSTB at cstb@nas.edu.

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Computing Research for Sustainability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13415.
×

Preface

Computer science and information technologies offer a wide range of tools for examining sustainability challenges. Advances in computer science have already provided environmental and sustainability researchers with a valuable tool set—computational modeling, data management, sensor technology, machine learning, and other tools—and additional research in computer science may provide advanced approaches, tools, techniques, and strategies toward understanding, addressing, and communicating sustainability challenges.

The present study emerged from an informal request to the National Research Council’s Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) from the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, National Science Foundation (NSF). The project was funded by the National Science Foundation. The statement of task for the Committee on Computing Research for Environmental and Societal Sustainability, established by the National Research Council to carry out this study, is as follows:

Computing has many potential “green” applications including improving energy conservation, enhancing energy management, reducing carbon emissions in many sectors, improving environmental protection (including mitigation and adaptation to climate change), and increasing awareness of environmental challenges and responses. An ad hoc committee would plan and conduct a public workshop to survey sustainability challenges, current research initiatives, results from previously-held topical workshops, and related industry and government development

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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Computing Research for Sustainability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13415.
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efforts in these areas. The workshop would feature invited presentations and discussions that explore research themes and specific research opportunities that could advance sustainability objectives and also result in advances in computer science and consider research modalities, with a focus on applicable computational techniques and long-term research that might be supported by the National Science Foundation, and with an emphasis on problem- or user-driven research.

The committee would obtain additional inputs through briefings to the committee and solicitations of comments and white papers from the research community. It would use additional deliberative meetings of the committee to develop a consensus report identifying promising research opportunities, cataloging applicable computational techniques, laying out an overall framework for “green” computing research, and recommending long-term research objectives and directions. The committee’s consensus report will include a summary of the workshop as an appendix.

The committee reviewed current efforts underway in industry (and other opportunities for the immediate application of existing information technology) and explored research themes and specific research opportunities that could advance sustainability (energy and environmental) objectives and also result in advances in computer science. The committee considered research modalities, with a focus on applicable computational techniques and long-term research.

The report, which includes as Appendix A the summary of the Workshop on Innovation in Computing and Information Technology for Sustainability, identifies promising research opportunities, catalogs applicable computational techniques, lays out an overall framework for computing research for sustainability, and recommends long-term research objectives and directions. Chapter 1 provides examples of domains of potential impact, Chapter 2 describes methods and approaches, and Chapter 3, which is aimed primarily at computer science researchers, articulates why the interplay between addressing sustainability challenges and computer science research merits attention.

Meeting these challenges will involve advances in a number of computing research areas, including the following: scalability; robustness; reliability; real-time observation and processing; low-power computing, and sensing and actuation; and human interaction with the environment, observations, and feedback systems. A number of specific areas of computer science and topics addressed in current research programs of NSF’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering are relevant.

This report represents the cooperative effort of many people. The members of the study committee, after substantial discussions, drafted

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Computing Research for Sustainability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13415.
×

and worked through several revisions of the report. The committee would like to thank Jeannette Wing, Sampath Kannan, and Douglas Fisher for their encouragement and support of this study. The committee also appreciates the insights and perspective provided by the following experts who presented briefings:

Adjo Amekudzi, Georgia Institute of Technology,

Peter Bajcsy, National Institute of Standards and Technology,

Eli Blevis, Indiana University, Bloomington,

David Brown, Duke University,

Randal Bryant, Carnegie Mellon University,

David Douglas, National Ecological Observatory,

John Doyle, California Institute of Technology,

Chris Forest, Pennsylvania State University,

Thomas Harmon, University of California, Merced,

Neo Martinez, Pacific Ecoinformatics and Computational Ecology Lab,

Vijay Modi, Columbia University,

Shwetak Patel, University of Washington,

Robert Pfahl, International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative,

David Shmoys, Cornell University, and

Bill Tomlinson, University of California, Irvine.

Finally, I thank CSTB staff members Lynette Millett and Virginia Bacon Talati for their efforts in steering the committee’s work, coordinating the meetings and speakers, and drafting, editing, and revising report material.

Deborah L. Estrin, Chair
Committee on Computing Research for
Environmental and Societal Sustainability

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Computing Research for Sustainability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13415.
×

Acknowledgment of Reviewers

This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report:

Alice Agogino, University of California, Berkeley,

Ruzena Bajcsy, University of California, Berkeley,

Jeff Dozier, University of California, Santa Barbara,

Brian Gaucher, T.J. Watson Research Center, IBM,

Roger Ghanem, University of Southern California,

Marija Ilic, Carnegie Mellon University,

David Shmoys, Cornell University, and

Bill Tomlinson, University of California, Irvine.

Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations, nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by Katharine

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Computing Research for Sustainability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13415.
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Frase, IBM. Appointed by the National Research Council, she was responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Computing Research for Sustainability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13415.
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A broad and growing literature describes the deep and multidisciplinary nature of the sustainability challenges faced by the United States and the world. Despite the profound technical challenges involved, sustainability is not, at its root, a technical problem, nor will merely technical solutions be sufficient. Instead, deep economic, political, and cultural adjustments will ultimately be required, along with a major, long-term commitment in each sphere to deploy the requisite technical solutions at scale.

Nevertheless, technological advances and enablers have a clear role in supporting such change, and information technology (IT) is a natural bridge between technical and social solutions because it can offer improved communication and transparency for fostering the necessary economic, political, and cultural adjustments. Moreover, IT is at the heart of nearly every large-scale socioeconomic system-including systems for finance, manufacturing, and the generation and distribution of energy-and so sustainability-focused changes in those systems are inextricably linked with advances in IT.

The focus of Computing Research for Sustainability is "greening through IT," the application of computing to promote sustainability broadly. The aim of this report is twofold: to shine a spotlight on areas where IT innovation and computer science (CS) research can help, and to urge the computing research community to bring its approaches and methodologies to bear on these pressing global challenges. Computing Research for Sustainability focuses on addressing medium- and long-term challenges in a way that would have significant, measurable impact. The findings and recommended principles of the Committee on Computing Research for Environmental and Societal Sustainability concern four areas: (1) the relevance of IT and CS to sustainability; (2) the value of the CS approach to problem solving, particularly as it pertains to sustainability challenges; (3) key CS research areas; and (4) strategy and pragmatic approaches for CS research on sustainability.

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