The Computational Sustainability Lab, Edinburgh Napier University’s new physical and virtual lab, has joined decisiongradeiot.
The Computational Sustainability Lab aims to deepen understanding of sustainability informatics and support the development of sustainable practices in all domains. Work in the field of computational sustainability is inherently interdisciplinary, as is action on sustainable development in general. The foundations of computational sustainability as a field of research were laid by Carla Gomes in 2008 with the establishment of the Institute for Computational Sustainability (ICS) at Cornell University. Its brief was to pursue a transformative research agenda and to concentrate the attention and efforts of computer scientists on the challenges around sustainability. The range of topics that fall under the banner of computational sustainability is very wide. It is also an associative field in the sense that work done for other reasons and without explicit reference to computational sustainability could still sit comfortably under its umbrella. Dr Brian Davison, the Lab’s lead, said:
“One of the main concerns of sustainability in general is the efficient husbandry of resources. From that perspective, many situations can be represented as optimisation problems where machine learning approaches are applicable. However, machine learning relies on the availability of sufficient quantities of reliable data, and data acquisition – for example, through sensors embedded in the environment – is a common requirement. One particular technological approach that is well-suited to addressing the various dimensions of a problem of this type is the new field of the Internet of Things (IoT). We’re excited to join the adhocracy to co-create standardised processes for digital devices and their data measuring environmental sustainability”.