IEN – Environmental Impact of Digital Technologies

Launched in January 2024 for a duration of 3 years, the IEN project (Environmental Impact of Digital Technologies) aims to offer a systemic approach to evaluate the direct and indirect impacts of digital systems (servers, hosting infrastructures, software, digital services, etc.) on the environment. This evaluation system would enable both private and public organisations to make informed investment decisions or recommend certain uses in order to adopt an approach of digital sobriety.

In order to meet this challenge, the IEN project will establish both transparent and homogeneous calculation indicators and methods, which will be based on which will be base on a complete life-cycle study of components under investigation. This will make it possible to precisely quantify induced environmental savings and costs, taking into account all their components (data centre, network, terminals, etc.). In brief, the ambition of the IEN project is to provide a standardized framework and tool-based methodology that can be universally applied by industries, local authorities, suppliers, and others. This will assist them in making well-informed technological decisions.

Expected results

• Define evaluation rules on the environmental impacts of physical components at every stage of the lifecycle of digital systems;
• Establish a decision-making tool, based on environmental or economic criteria, towards technological choices, data processing methods and equipment to be used;
• Share with the scientific community a systemic diagnostics guide on environmental impacts, and even training solutions to make players aware of the environmental impact of digital systems in line with institutional references (Ademe, Arcep, etc.).

Skills

• Data science and AI
• Optimization
• Systems engineering
• Digital security

Targeted markets​

• All industrial sectors, suppliers of digital solutions.

Supervised theses within the framework of the project

• Thesis #1 – Implementation of life cycle analysis indicators and a methodology for assessing the environmental impact of a digital system.
• Thesis #2 – Assessing the environmental footprint of DNS (Domain Name System).

Find out more

• [Press release] SystemX launches the IEN project dedicated to the development of tools to evaluate the environmental performance of digital technologies
• [White paper] State of the art of the environmental impact of digital technologies