GOA INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT

Information Systems
and Environmental
Sustainability
Software Engineering and Management

25/10/2010

Submitted By:

Ameya Salkar (2009007)

Subhadip Thakurta (2009116)

Vishwesh Singbal (2009119)

Table of Contents

Table of Contents...................................................................................................2
Introduction to Information Systems (IS)...............................................................3
Introduction to Sustainable development..............................................................4
“Our Common Future”...........................................................................................5
Carbon Emission and reduction.............................................................................6
Mitigating the environmental impact of IT.............................................................6
Supporting Global Communities to Change Policies and Outcomes.......................8
Application of GIS in environmental protection......................................................9
Belief–Action–Outcome (BAO) Conceptual Framework...........................................9
Belief Formation................................................................................................. 9
Action Formation..............................................................................................10
Outcome Assessment.......................................................................................10
Energy Informatics Framework............................................................................11
Green IS in Education..........................................................................................12
Framework for Evaluation of Environmental Sustainability of Information Systems
............................................................................................................................ 13
Conclusion........................................................................................................... 16
References........................................................................................................... 17
Introduction to Information Systems (IS)

An Information System can be described as a combination of the ever growing information

technology and the activities which people do to facilitate operations, management and
decision making. It encompasses the interaction between human beings, processes, data and
technology. It consists of a set of interrelated components that collect, process, store and
distribute information to facilitate decision making. The information is collected about
people, places and other significant activities occurring in or around an organization. The
various entities involved may be Suppliers, Customers, Competitors and Regulatory bodies
which interact with an information system of an organization. All the inputs are processed to
produce output which again provides feedback for process correction or changes required in
the system. The figure below shows the relationships between the various entities and
function of an IS. (Managing Digital Firm 2010)

Figure 1: Functions of an Information System

Source: http://e-learning.mfu.ac.th/mflu/1203371/Chapter1_1.htm
In business, computer literacy has become a fundamental need nowadays. Almost all
established organisations use information systems to manage the business effectively. Almost
all employees thus need to be aware of the functional operations of the information system as
well as the way it manages the technical intellectual property of the firm. The figure below
shows the way information systems have become critical for the functioning of a firm.
(Managing Digital Firm 2010)

Figure 2: Relationship between Information Systems, Technology,

Organizations and Management

Source: http://e-learning.mfu.ac.th/mflu/1203371/Chapter1_1.htm

Introduction to Sustainable development

The European Union defines Sustainable Development as “progress that integrates immediate
and longer term needs, local and global needs, and regards social, economical and
environmental as inseparable and interdependent components of human progress”.
Sustainable Development can be described as the manner in which resources are used to meet
human needs such that the environment is preserved when fulfilling these needs and future
generations are also benefited by this. Sustainable development works within the carrying
capacity of natural systems with the social challenges facing humanity. Ecologists have time
and again pointed to the various effects technological and industrial advancements have had
on the natural resources. Environmental concerns have to be addressed before the situation
spirals out of control. Environmental sustainability refers to the conscious effort of making
sure that the current processes of interaction with the environment are carried out with a goal
to keep the environment unharmed and natural. Failing to do this leads to unsustainable
development whereby the natural resources get used up faster than they are replenished. The
following table summarises the repercussions of activities of men might lead to.
(Environmental Sustainability 2010)

Table 1: Environmental Sustainability

Consumption of renewable State of environment Sustainability

resources
More than nature's ability to Environmental Not sustainable
replenish degradation
Equal to nature's ability to replenish Environmental Steady state economy
equilibrium
Less than nature's ability to Environmental renewal Environmentally
replenish sustainable
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development#Environmental_sustainability

“Our Common Future”

In 1987, United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED)

published “Our Common Future” also known as the Brundtland report. The main issues
targeted by this report were the interdependence of nations in the search of a sustainable
development path. (Documents n.d.) Most countries have accepted sustainable development
as the basis of their national development strategies and acknowledge that the essential key to
sustainable development is the fulfilment of sustainable strategies and policies considering
the exhaustive effects of ecological, environmental and social issues which should be
integrated into the decision making processes of all the policies, plans and programs (PPPs)
as wells as the constructions of projects. As part of the implementation of National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in the US the federal agencies prepare a detailed
statement known as an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) which is the beginning of
strategy environmental assessment (SEA). (BAI Hongtao 2008) SEA is a formalized,
systematic and comprehensive process of evaluating the environmental impacts, which
concerns not only the traditional issues such as water contamination, pollution effects and
ecological influences but also the other factors including social, economical, cultural issues
and even human health analysis. (BAI Hongtao 2008)

Carbon Emission and reduction

It is widely assumed that a typical computer uses about .65 kilowatts per hour (kWh) in use,
or .35kWh (stand-by) and .03kWh in hibernate mode. Assuming that the computer spends
220 working days with 12 hours in operational mode (1716kW) and 12 hours in standby
mode (924kW), and spends 24 hours in hibernate mode for the remaining 145 days
(104kW),it will consume 2145 kW of electricity. According to UK government figures,
1kWh produces 0.51kg of carbon dioxide (CO2), and 1,960kWh produces 1 tonne of CO2.
This makes allowance for the fact that with current nuclear capacity (which is reducing) some
15% of electricity is generated without producing any CO2.This means that a single PC in
office mode costs an insignificant amount to run (£16.00 per annum), but generates 1.094
tonnes of CO2 per annum equivalent to the CO2 produced by a single passenger flying from
London to Cairo – spread this across a distributed desktop environment of 2,000 PCs and you
have an annual carbon footprint of 2,188 tonnes of CO2. (IBM - India n.d.)

Many a times it is observed that the PCs are on kept on even if it is not in use and thus
contributing to carbon emission and potential environmental hazards. The mitigating step that
can be taken from the employer side is to educate the employees of the nuances of keeping
the PCs switched on even when not in use. Many companies have actually started
implementing laws to levy penalty charges from the employees violating rules (not switching
off PC). (IBM - India n.d.)

Mitigating the environmental impact of IT

As access to information over the Internet has become more global, ownership of the asset
pool has become much less concentrated in developed nations. Near-ubiquitous connectivity
and access to information has empowered people to contribute to the world’s knowledge base
from every corner of the world. (Going Green - IT and Environmental Sustainability n.d.)

But this ever-expanding digital universe is not a remedy for all the problems: It has had
environmental consequences. Increasing use of IT has resulted in companies consuming large
amounts of resources to build out data centers and server farms, and it’s driving higher
demands for energy. Yet many of these resources are being wasted. The average utilization
rate for servers ranges from 5 percent to 15 percent and for non-networked storage, 20
percent to 40 percent. That means many companies are paying the energy costs to run data
centers at 100 percent capacity, but are only using 5 percent to 15 percent of that capacity—a
tremendous waste. (Going Green - IT and Environmental Sustainability n.d.)

At the same time, as much as 70 percent of the information an organization accumulates may
never or only rarely be accessed. Clearly, the IT industry must minimize the environmental
impact of rapid information growth by attaining higher levels of efficiency. Three key
technology initiatives support this goal:

• Virtualization and consolidation

• Information lifecycle management

• De-duplication (Going Green - IT and Environmental Sustainability n.d.)

Virtualization and consolidation are essential to energy conservation in the data center, where
IT managers have installed more and more systems to enhance performance, redundancy, and
availability, but without a focus on power or cooling efficiency. Virtualization addresses
these inefficiencies by separating software from the underlying hardware, so that a single
computer can run multiple operating systems and applications. In turn, better utilization of
servers and storage means deployment of fewer machines—thereby using less electricity for
power and cooling. (Going Green - IT and Environmental Sustainability n.d.)

Information lifecycle management (ILM) is based on the premise that the value of
information changes over time. ILM uses automatic intelligence to store information in the
most appropriate and energy-efficient storage device at every point in its lifecycle. For
example, business-critical and real-time information requires systems that offer the highest
reliability and performance—and therefore demand more resources and power. When that
information reaches a less critical state, ILM migrates it to storage that consumes less energy.
(Going Green - IT and Environmental Sustainability n.d.)
De-duplication vastly reduces the amount of stored backup data that results from users
storing multiple copies and variations of the same file in many places across the network. De-
duplication stops runaway duplication by transforming data files into data segments that can
be stored and re-used in multiple files. The original file is saved and backed up just once to a
central server. When file edits are sent to the server, they’re in the form of new and unique
sub-file data segments associated with the original, and only those new segments are backed
up. De-duplication can reduce network bandwidth and backup storage by a factor of 300.
(Going Green - IT and Environmental Sustainability n.d.)

Supporting Global Communities to Change Policies and

Outcomes

Beyond reducing the environmental impact of the information explosion, the might of IT can
be leveraged to share the information about environmental sustainability, enabling people to
come together around the world to devise new approaches and solutions. (Community based
adaptation to climate change: an update n.d.)

A new, global platform for collaboration—enabled by blogs, wikis, and social networks—has
given rise to virtual communities, where everyone can contribute to a global dialogue by
uploading their own ideas, content, and products for wide dissemination and comment. This
is fundamentally changing the flow of information gathering, distribution, innovation,
political mobilization, and more. And the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and
Development (UN-GAID) itself has been using these technologies to collaborate across its
global network. (Community based adaptation to climate change: an update n.d.)

Creating environmental sustainability is a massive undertaking. It will demand global

collaboration and cooperation among the largest and most influential stakeholders in the
outcome—the United Nations, government and non-governmental organizations, businesses,
universities, and individuals. It will demand taking a system view of energy generation,
energy use, and climate change. We must all join hands and put in our religious efforts to use
IT for environment sustainability. (Community based adaptation to climate change: an update
n.d.)
Application of GIS in environmental protection

“A geographic information system (GIS) integrates hardware, software, and data for
capturing, managing, analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically referenced
information.” (What is GIS? n.d.)

• Geographic – 80% of government data collected is associated with some location in space.
(Terborgh 2009)

• Information - Attributes, or the characteristics (data), can be used to symbolize and provide
further insight into a given location. (Terborgh 2009)

• System – A seamless operation linking the information to the geography – which requires
hardware, networks, software, data, and operational procedures. (Terborgh 2009)

On the ground of the computer hardware and software, GIS has the abilities of gather,
storage, management, simulation, analysis and display of spatial information and result,
providing spatial and dynamic information to decision-makers for the comprehensive
evaluation, management and quantitative analysis. The objects of GIS include not only
geospatial information, but also the social science data of real world. Therefore, GIS has
infiltrated many fields of modern sciences as an advanced tool to support decision-making.
Based on its outstanding spatial analysis functions and powerful graphics and data processing
capabilities, GIS has been more and more introduced into environmental protection,
particularly into the field of environmental assessment. (BAI Hongtao 2008)

Belief–Action–Outcome (BAO) Conceptual Framework

Belief Formation
Problems involving information systems and environmental sustainability involve human
behaviour and the broader social, organizational, and environmental contexts. Various factors
like society, cultural influences (movies, political discourse) and family affect the beliefs of
an individual about the health of environment and the actions of the human beings affecting
it. Adding to these beliefs are organizational factors, recycling campaigns, corporate vision
statements and environmental management systems which shape the beliefs about
environment. There are few studies which have studied the role of IS in belief formation in
the context of environmental sustainability. Researchers try to find the relation between how
information presented and belief formation about environment. Integrated assessment is one
way through which this can be achieved. For e.g. researchers provided an IS for residents
which gave them information about local climate changes. Later focus groups using this
system were identified to draw conclusions about how the information system helped them in
taking decisions related to the climate. Belief formation often might be subjected internal
conflicts due to organizational and personal values. (Melville 2010)

Action Formation
This part talks about how the beliefs which are formed can be translated into actions which
affect the natural environment. This includes something done by the individual, say changing
the way he disposes waste or his decision to adopt an IS to improve organizational recycling
or car pooling to reduce usage of fossil fuels. (Melville 2010)

Outcome Assessment
This part of the conceptual framework deals with the way the actions lead to environmental
sustainability. Furthermore it can be evaluated how the actions bring about a change in the
beliefs of others in the environment and case them to act on the issues. These outcomes will
actually determine whether the actions are sustainable which in turn will strengthen or
weaken the beliefs of an individual. Hence we can observe that none of the stages of the BAO
model can be considered to be permanent. New beliefs can be introduced or existing ones can
be changed leading to changes further down the framework. (Melville 2010)

The above mentioned framework if implemented can utilise the IS at various stages to
measure its effectiveness. There is also scope available for design of IS which give data about
the invisible aspects of the environment. This may be termed as Visualisation of
Environmental Information which will provide information about say, usage of fossil fuel and
amount of plastic recycled. There is also scope available for revolutionary developments to
inform the people about various environmental aspects like mobile phones to provide
information about pollution levels or social networking sites providing information about
social network use and attitudes about environment. (Melville 2010)
Energy Informatics Framework

Energy Informatics is a framework proposed by Richard T. Watson, Marie-Claude Boudreau

and Adela J. Chen in their paper “Information Systems and Environmentally Sustainable
Development: Energy Informatics and New Directions for IS Community.” Energy
informatics is a framework that recognizes the role that IS can play in reducing energy
consumption, and thus CO2 emissions. It is concerned with analyzing, designing, and
implementing systems to increase the efficiency of energy demand and supply systems. This
requires collection and analysis of energy data sets to support optimization of energy
distribution and consumption networks. (Richard T. Watson 2010)

Figure 3: Energy Informatics Network

Source: (Richard T. Watson 2010)

The framework was developed by the researchers after they observed what organizations
were doing to deal with problems like traffic congestion, reducing building energy
consumption, optimizing delivery truck routes, cutting component replacement costs etc. The
commonality of these problems was studied to find the solutions. A broad outline of the
framework is shown in the figure above. There is a supplier and a demanding entity present
for any energy consumption activity. Considering the eco goals of both entities, on both sides
policies and regulations, economics and corporate norms will be the driving factors for the
reduction of its energy consumption. (Richard T. Watson 2010)

A flow network is a set of connected transport components that supports the movement of
continuous matter (e.g., electricity, oil, air, and water) or discrete objects (e.g., cars,
packages, containers, and people). They are the hearts of any energy distribution and
consumption system. A sensor network is a set of spatially distributed devices that reports the
status of a physical item or environmental condition. It might report, for instance,
temperature, air composition (to detect pollution), location and speed of a mobile object,
contents of a package in transit, or the traffic on a link. A sensitized object is a physical good
that a consumer owns or manages and has the capability to sense and report data about its
use. For e.g. nowadays there is equipment available which can be fit to home appliances to
measure its energy consumption and length of usage in terms of time. (Richard T. Watson
2010)

An information system ties together these elements to provide a complete solution. The
sensitised object will measure its energy requirement and through the information system it
will be conveyed to the energy supplier. IS will transmit data to automated controllers in the
flow network to dynamically change a network based on the output of optimization algorithm
which will have the data from sensitised objects as its input. This information will enable
consumers to automate or control the unnecessary energy consumption at peak hours.
Comparison across various users can be drawn to decide upon acceptable benchmarks which
can be practised by everyone in the system. (Richard T. Watson 2010)

Green IS in Education

There are many educational institutes which have been proactive in creating awareness about
sustainability among young minds leading to rise of sustainability institutes (for e.g. School
of Sustainability and Golisano Institute for Sustainability at Arizona State University and
Rochester Institute of Technology respectively ). Many institutes have incorporated
environmental sustainability in their curricula. Socially responsible academics also need to
add Green IS to their curriculum. In the initial classes introduction to green computing and
ways of usage personal computers to reduce emissions can be done. The traditional system
analysis courses and courses in design can be modified in such a way that they incorporate
environmental sustainability as a dimension. The designing can be done such that
sustainability is an ouutcome of it. (Richard T. Watson 2010)

The IS designers play a very important role in directing the way of working for many
organisations today. Hence their tasks can be reframed to include a focus on designing
environmentally sustainable organizational practises that monitor and reduce the extent of
harmful emissions and used resources. It has been a growing trend to use life cycle analysis
(LCA) to caputre cumulative carbon emissions produced throughout the life time of a
product. The information which is extracted from LCA is used to come up with carbon usage
labels on tested products. Certifications and regulations have been in progress for a long time
and many organisations are pressured to bring out mpre information about the making of their
products to the end customer. These pressures will ultimately trickle down to IS and they will
be designed to incorporate techniques for assessing the energy costs and emissions of an
organization’s products and services. (Richard T. Watson 2010)

IS students are most likely to select new technology and systems once they turn professionals
and hence they should be well aware of the environmental impacts of the decisions they take.
A large data centre consume energy equivalent to a factory and energy consumption by
computers form a large chunk of total energy consumption of a developed nation. IT
investments have been growing around the world and this further underscores the importance
of reduction in energy consumption by computer systems. Teaching aides like teaching cases
and textbook chapters will need to get developed. Academics must take initiative in building
this by writing executive case studies that illustrate how a company has tackled the challenge
of Green IS. MBA and executive education can be enhanced by use of these cases. These
cases will help in providing insights and also stimulate research questions. (Richard T.
Watson 2010)

Framework for Evaluation of Environmental

Sustainability of Information Systems

The concern about the possibility of extinction of human life or loss of inability of the Earth
to support life due to human activities has forced various initiatives for development and
environmental economics. This has further challenged many of the fundamental goals and
assumptions made for running businesses in the earlier times. Customers, policymakers and
business partners increasingly require the monitoring and reporting of the organisational
impact on sustainability. The effect of traditional Information systems (IS) has not been
measured very accurately in relation to social and environmental dimensions. Wojciech
Piotrowicz and Richard Cuthbertson in their paper “Sustainability – a new dimension in
information systems evaluation” have proposed a framework originally developed to evaluate
supply chain practises. It can be noted here that IS play an important role in an effective
supply chain. In the domain of supply chains Sustainable Development is a new area that has
started to be incorporated into mainstream Operations management, Logistics and
Information systems. (Piotrowicz and Cuthbertson 2009)

So far the positive and negative aspects of the Information Technology on environment has
been studied but the actual effect of IS on sustainable development has not been considered
per se. One of the areas in the supply chains which has been time and again pointed out as
causing damage to environment is the transport. Pollution, road accidents, congestions are
few of the negative effects of transport as a component of supply chains. However this may
be changed by the extensive use of IS. Information technology in supply chain management
broadly covers the following areas:

• Strategic Planning

• Virtual Enterprise

• E-commerce

• Infrastructure

• Knowledge and,

• IT management and the implementation of the IT in supply chain management.

(Piotrowicz and Cuthbertson 2009)

In various industries IS has already started revolutionised the way of doing work. Few
examples of that can be Computerised Production Systems that integrate manufacturing
activities (through joint production planning, tracking, scheduling and ordering from
suppliers), Integrated IS that provide the ability to transmit and share information within an
organisation (horizontally and vertically) and Integrated Electronic Data Interchange that
enables the flow of electronic documents automatically between organisations. In Supply
Chain Management there are areas where transport effect linked with the environmental
sustainability can be changed by IS. These are effective SCM, teleshopping, virtual goods,
intelligent transport systems and production process management. (Piotrowicz and
Cuthbertson 2009)
The framework used to evaluate supply chains is given below. It can be extended to evaluate
the impact of IS on environment. The framework is based on three dimensions, which are
Social, Economic and Environmental. There are further divided into sub-dimensions as
shown in the figure below:

Figure 4: Sustainability Dimensions and Sub-dimensions

Source: (Piotrowicz and Cuthbertson 2009)

The impact on environmental sustainability as shown can be measured in terms of Emissions

(CO2 emissions, emissions of other pollutants), Natural Resources Utilisation (fuel
consumption, water consumption, land use, energy consumption) and Waste and Recycling
(waste reduction, percentage of materials and products recycled, bio-degradable materials
used). (Piotrowicz and Cuthbertson 2009)

The evaluation of environmental sustainability is not an easy task; however it is emerging as

a need of the current days. Most of the evaluation criteria currently used focuses on the
economic implications and some social impacts. But these evaluations are confined within an
organisation. There have been proposals from various researchers for identification of e-
business and IS impacts on the environment and the related indicators. The framework
mentioned above may be used as a starting point for this work. The wide range of
applications in which IS is present makes it all the more difficult for assessing its
environmental sustainability. Hence there is a need for cooperation between IS and other
fields and disciplines so that the findings are effectively implemented. (Piotrowicz and
Cuthbertson 2009)
Conclusion

In the words of renowned climate scientist James Hansen, “Our global climate is nearing
tipping points. Changes are beginning to appear, and there is a potential for rapid changes
with effects that would be irreversible—if we do not rapidly slow fossil fuel emissions during
the next few decades.” (James Hansen on Climate Tipping Points and Political Leadership
n.d.) IS have been a powerful but underutilised tool with the organizations in their quest for
environmental sustainability. New practices and processes can be introduced in support of
belief formation, action formation and outcome assessment. At the same time there are
various studies which are opposing the increasing usage of computers since it is considered
harmful to the environment. Hence it is important that the half-truths be converted into
complete truths. This will help the people to judge the appropriateness of usage of IS for
environmentally sustainable tasks.
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