Sustainable Digitalization - Terms & Definitions
Terms and definitions in the field of sustainable digitalization can be quite confusing. This note tries to separate some terms by using definitions from scientific literature. Please note, that currently this list is not complete and still inconsistent.
Sustainable Software
German translation:
"Grüne Software" ist Software, deren direkte und indirekte negativen Auswirkungen auf Menschen, Gesellschaft und Umwelt über ihren gesamten Lebenszyklus hinweg minimal sind und die bestenfalls einen zusätzlichen positiven Beitrag zur nachhaltigen Entwicklung leisten.
Five dimensions of sustainable software
@Becker.etal.2015.KarlskronaManifestoSustainability:
- Social sustainability: Which effects do software systems have on the society (e.g. communication, interaction, government…)?
- Environmental sustainability: How does software affect the environment during, inter alia, development and maintenance?
- Technical sustainability: How can software be created so that it can easily adapt to future changes?
- Economic sustainability: How can software systems be created so that the stakeholders’ long-term investments are as safe as possible from economic risks?
- Individual sustainability: How can software be created and maintained in a way that enables developers to be satisfied with their job over a long period of time?
Green Software
Green software engineering is concerned with the environmental dimension of sustainable software engineering.
Sustainable Computing / Green IT
Sustainable Computing ≈ Green Computing ≈ Green IT
→ in comparison to green software, green IT includes also other aspects within IT: resource consumption, water consumption in data centers, embodied carbon of ICT devices…
Green Software Engineering
Green Software Engineering is an umbrella for software energy consumption, green mining, green IT, and sustainable computing.
Hindle, A. (2016). Green Software Engineering: The Curse of Methodology. 2016 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, and Reengineering (SANER), 5, 46–55. https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER.2016.60
Sustainability by Software / Green by IT
Sustainability by Software ≈ Green by IT ≈ Software Engineering for the Planet ≈ Software for Sustainability [1]
The environmental impacts and sustainability of software are discussed using different terms, depending on the context. This chapter is based on the definition by Dick et al. [4]: “Sustainable Software is software, whose impacts on economy, society, human beings, and environment that result from development, deployment, and usage of the software are minimal and/or which have a positive effect on sustainable development” [4, 5]. We use the terms “sustainable software,”“green software,” and “energy- and resource-efficient software” interchangeably. The latter terms point out the focus on consuming fewer natural resources, i.e., environmental and resource protection.
Guldner, A., Kern, E., Kreten, S., & Naumann, S. (2021). Criteria for Sustainable Software Products: Analyzing Software, Informing Users, and Politics. In C. Calero, M. Á. Moraga, & M. Piattini (Eds.), Software Sustainability (pp. 17–42). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69970-3_2
See also
Calero, C., Moraga, M. Á., & Piattini, M. (2021). Introduction to Software Sustainability. In C. Calero, M. Á. Moraga, & M. Piattini (Eds.), Software Sustainability (pp. 1–15). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69970-3_1
🔗 References
Kern, E., Guldner, A., & Naumann, S. (2019). Including Software Aspects in Green IT: How to Create Awareness for Green Software Issues. In V. Kharchenko, Y. Kondratenko, & J. Kacprzyk (Eds.), Green IT Engineering: Social, Business and Industrial Applications (pp. 3–20). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00253-4_1 ↩︎