The PC1 is called Assess-Impact: “Understanding, measuring, estimating, and characterizing direct and indirect impacts of digital systems and services - Life-Cycle and Systemic effects”.
While research over the past 20 years has led to increasingly energy-efficient digital technologies (from microchips to software layers, including computing, data, and network infrastructure), it is clear that digital technology continues to consume more and more resources, contributing to the exceeding of planetary boundaries. In the Assess-Impact project, we want to examine the reasons behind this observation and propose methodological and practical solutions to fuel public debate on digital sufficiency. Our work will be conducted along three complementary axes.
The first axis will focus on life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies, in order to revisit and consolidate their application to digital services while extending them to take social aspects into account. A current limitation of LCA studies is that they only look at part of the problem, namely the ICT equipment itself, thereby neglecting, in particular, the effects associated with the use of digital services. Furthermore, current studies are based on incomplete data and allocation methodologies of the impacts related to shared equipment or services or partial recycling, which are not suitable for decision-making purposes. What about an efficient, optimized digital service, for which a traditional attributional LCA would show favorable results while overlooking the socio-technical context in which it is deployed as well as its social impacts both upstream and downstream of its use?
The second axis will naturally focus on the systemic effects of digitization, both in the digital sector itself and in other areas of activity. Based on a critical analysis of the methodologies used in existing studies and their associated controversies, we will focus on developing tools for quantifying scenarios of digital solution deployments. Simulators designed for decision-makers will enable them to study numerous alternative scenarios and imagine, without technical, economic, social, or political constraints, ways to achieve greater digital sufficiency and measure their respective absolute consequences. The development of digital technology is also known to cause rebound effects, and we wish to deepen our understanding of its mechanisms in order to better anticipate them.
The third axis will lay the groundwork for identifying the potential and obstacles associated with digital sufficiency, in order to understand what would accelerate awareness of the need for action, while making that action desirable and therefore acceptable to digital users. We want to understand how the user-friendliness of digital deployment can be achieved. Three case studies, on workplace computers, on Cloud and HPC services hosted on infrastructures, and on generative AI, will enable us to deepen our knowledge of these socio-technical potentials and anchor our studies in the digital reality.
The project brings together teams from the Sciences and Technologies and Humanities and Social Sciences domains to emphasize multidisciplinary work combining computer science, electronics, sociology, economics, management, and even the philosophy of science.
Leaders: Gael Guennebaud (Inria, Bordeaux), Jean-Marc Pierson (Univ. Toulouse)