digital – Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

Digital home working and its sustainability potential: human immobility and the mobilities of stuff

Posted on May 24, 2022April 16, 2023 by janet.crompton

Despite the huge human and economic costs of the COVID pandemic, many commentators have observed that this disruption – or shock – to our resource-intensive daily lives could offer a catalyst for the great societal transformations necessary to meet the climate emergency.

Radical growth of home working is an oft-cited example. According to Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures 50% of those in employment did some work from home in April 2020. This mainstreaming of home working has been facilitated by the rapid appropriation of digital devices and services into our everyday lives. It has been accompanied by equally rapid development of cultural skills and competencies required to (collectively) use those devices and services in a satisfactory way. And has led to major adjustments in how we work but also how we shop, interact, use our homes, engage with our local communities, learn, care for others and so on.

Home working during the pandemic, March 2020 (image: Simon Evans on Flickr)

The question is whether these shifts could lead to systemic environmental gains. Is it an environmental ‘good’ or ‘bad’? As ever with academics, our answer is ‘it’s not straightforward…’, but when viewed from a systemic perspective it does offer an opportunity to re-imagine sustainable ways of life.

When considering the environmental impacts of any technology or practice, understanding will be shaped by the scope of the analysis: what is considered inside the system being studied and what is ignored. A narrow scope, focused only on the technological parts of the system, makes it more straightforward to quantify the results (such as a ‘carbon footprint’ of something) but means missing out the broader implications – such as how any technology interacts with diverse social practices. One approach to this problem is to consider different scopes for analysis that address the direct, indirect and systemic impacts of a technology. We apply this framing to home working to consider some possibilities.

Direct impacts are the environmental costs of constructing, using and disposing of a technology. Engineering methods, such as life cycle assessment (LCA) (or more colloquially, ‘carbon footprinting’) can be used to model the technology’s life cycle, systematically collect the relevant data and then apportion the ‘environmental burden’ to the different applications of that technology. In the case of digital home working, this will include the impacts of manufacturing the equipment used and providing the electricity to keep it operational: both the home laptops and Wi-Fi, but also a share of the networking equipment used to connect workers with their offices and each other, and the data centres used to power the applications they use. Accounting for this ‘hidden materiality’, and the large consumption of energy used by data centres, has led to some fearing that the impacts of digital home working are substantial. Applying University of Bristol models developed for digital services to video conferencing suggests that the truth is somewhere between the two. A ballpark estimate for the climate impact of a one-hour video conference, for example, would be about 50-100g CO2e depending on the setup used – roughly equivalent to driving 400-800m in a typical family car. This suggests that we should not let concerns about the direct environmental impact of digital services put us off a move to home working.

Indirect impacts are the environmental costs of changing social practices related to the digital service. What do people stop doing? What do they start doing? Again, LCA can be used to quantify these – but only if one understands the nature of these changes. Social science insights are essential here, both to identify what changes to practice might occur, and to collect the data to quantify the extent to which they change across diverse populations.

In the case of home working, the most obvious changes to practice are reduction in travel to work and decreases in energy use within workplaces. These two factors will potentially be substantially larger than the direct impacts of technology use – but will be more variable and harder to predict across the population. Reductions in heating and lighting in the workplace were, it would appear, largely offset by rises of domestic energy use (Hook et al., 2020). The most dramatic potential environmental savings are from the sharp reduction in commuting, with the Department for Transport reporting a 60% reduction in private car usage during 2020 and a 90% decline in the use of public transport. But even here we must consider a range of related indirect effects of the apparent immobility of people. During the same period, we witnessed a huge increase in online shopping as people ordered their goods for home delivery. The ONS shows that online retail sales increased from just under 19% of total retail sales in November 2019 to almost 40% within a year. Groceries, clothing, household products and takeaway foods saw the largest growth.

The digital devices and services that allowed us to adapt so quickly to conditions of apparent human immobility also offered the technological affordances and cultural skills necessary for a commensurate growth in the circulation of goods, ordered online and delivered (often as individual items) to the homes of the immobile. Measuring these effects – especially if trying to capture the relative weighting of a trip to the shopping mall to purchase multiple items versus delivery of multiple individual items purchased online – would be necessary to estimate indirect impacts.

Systemic impacts consist of a huge range of elements that shape, and are shaped by, technologies and social practices. In the case of home working, we pick out three core elements: infrastructures, cultures, and modes of provision. To consider the impact and potential of home working we need to recognise the changing home to include the re-purposing of space for home offices and the technologies required, from the high tech (digital devices and networks) to the low tech (desks and storage). Local communities are also changing, and development of local service infrastructures to support mass home working (for example, the re-invention of the local high street) together with a corresponding decline of city-based office infrastructures will be required if home working is to be viable over the longer term. Each of these changes come with their own direct and indirect environmental impacts.

Cultural shifts must also be considered. Workplace cultures of presenteeism, long working hours, the status of private offices, and daily meetings are all challenged by home-working regimes. In addition, the rising use of digital platforms shows signs of fostering modes of provision through informal networks (such as familial and community based) that have, in recent history, been marginalised by the dominance of market modes of provision. Community sharing initiatives (such as food box schemes, local delivery hubs, community stores) coupled with the accumulating practical challenges of privately owned goods (as symbolised by the increasing percentage of domestic space devoted to storing seldomly used consumer goods and the decreasing use of expensive private cars) have been argued to indicate a shift towards collaborative consumption: the rejection of privately owned goods in favour of sharing (Southerton and Warde, forthcoming). While the direct and indirect environmental impacts of such systemic shifts are unknown, the potential to reduce the material flows of goods and reduce the impacts of human mobility are clear.

Thinking in terms of the systemic implications of home working – symbolised by the immobility of people and rising mobility of goods during COVID – is more important than only measuring direct and indirect impacts. As things stand, we are moving in the direction of ‘hybrid’ working, presumably on the grounds of a ‘best of both worlds’ assumption. From a systems level perspective there is a huge risk that we end up with two systems: workplaces and home working. Whether this ends up being the worst of both worlds, layering new resource-efficient systems over old resource-intensive systems, will largely depend on whether debates regarding the post-COVID world takes the opportunity to re-imagine and re-configure the systemic impacts of technology and human practice on the environment (Geels et al., 2015).

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This blog is written by Chris Preist, Professor of Sustainability and Computer Systems at the University of Bristol. His research focuses on the environmental impact of digital technology and consumer electronic goods; and Dale Southerton, Professor in Sociology of Consumption and Organisation at the University of Bristol. He studies consumption, its role in organising everyday lives and its significance in processes of societal change.

AI & sustainable procurement: the public sector should first learn what it already owns

Posted on October 15, 2019April 4, 2023 by janet.crompton

While carrying out research on the impact of digital technologies for public procurement governance, I have realised that the deployment of artificial intelligence to promote sustainability through public procurement holds some promise. There are many ways in which machine learning can contribute to enhance procurement sustainability.

For example, new analytics applied to open transport data can significantly improve procurement planning to support more sustainable urban mobility strategies, as well as the emergence of new models for the procurement of mobility as a service (MaaS).* Machine learning can also be used to improve the logistics of public sector supply chains, as well as unlock new models of public ownership of, for example, cars. It can also support public buyers in identifying the green or sustainable public procurement criteria that will deliver the biggest improvements measured against any chosen key performance indicator, such as CO2 footprint, as well as support the development of robust methodologies for life-cycle costing.

However, it is also evident that artificial intelligence can only be effectively deployed where the public sector has an adequate data architecture.** While advances in electronic procurement and digital contract registers are capable of generating that data architecture for the future, there is a significant problem concerning the digitalisation of information on the outcomes of past procurement exercises and the current stock of assets owned and used by the public sector. In this blog, I want to raise awareness about this gap in public sector information and to advocate for the public sector to invest in learning what it already owns as a potential major contribution to sustainability in procurement, in particular given the catalyst effect this could have for a more circular procurement economy.

Backward-looking data as a necessary evidence base

It is notorious that the public sector’s management of procurement-related information is lacking. It is difficult enough to have access to information on ‘live’ tender procedures. Accessing information on contract execution and any contractual modifications has been nigh impossible until the very recent implementation of the increased transparency requirements imposed by the EU’s 2014 Public Procurement Package. Moreover, even where that information can be identified, there are significant constraints on the disclosure of competition-sensitive information or business secrets, which can also restrict access.*** This can be compounded in the case of procurement of assets subject to outsourced maintenance contracts, or in assets procured under mechanisms that do not transfer property to the public sector.

Accessing information on the outcomes of past procurement exercises is thus a major challenge. Where the information is recorded, it is siloed and compartmentalised. And, in any case, this is not public information and it is oftentimes only held by the private firms that supplied the goods or provided the services—with information on public works more likely to be, at least partially, under public sector control. This raises complex issues of business to government (B2G) data sharing, which is only a nascent area of practice and where the guidance provided by the European Commission in 2018 leaves many questions unanswered.*

I will not argue here that all that information should be automatically and unrestrictedly publicly disclosed, as that would require some careful considerations of the implications of such disclosures. However, I submit that the public sector should invest in tracing back information on procurement outcomes for all its existing stock of assets (either owned, or used under other contractual forms)—or, at least, in the main categories of buildings and real estate, transport systems and IT and communications hardware. Such database should then be made available to data scientists tasked with seeking all possible ways of optimising the value of that information for the design of sustainable procurement strategies.

In other words, in my opinion, if the public sector is to take procurement sustainability seriously, it should invest in creating a single, centralised database of the durable assets it owns as the necessary evidence base on which to seek to build more sustainable procurement policies. And it should then put that evidence base to good use.

More circular procurement economy based on existing stocks

In my view, some of the main advantages of creating such a database in the short-, medium- and long-term would be as follows.

In the short term, having comprehensive data on existing public sector assets would allow for the deployment of different machine learning solutions to seek, for example, to identify redundant or obsolete assets that could be reassigned or disposed of, or to reassess the efficiency of the existing investments eg in terms of levels of use and potential for increased sharing of assets, or in terms of the energy (in)efficiency derived from their use. It would also allow for a better understanding of potential additional improvements in eg maintenance strategies, as services could be designed having the entirety of the relevant stock into consideration.

In the medium term, this would also provide better insights on the whole life cycle of the assets used by the public sector, including the possibility of deploying machine learning to plan for timely maintenance and replacement, as well as to improve life cycle costing methodologies based on public-sector specific conditions. It would also facilitate the creation of a ‘public sector second-hand market’, where entities with lower levels of performance requirements could acquire assets no longer fit for their original purpose, eg computers previously used in more advanced tasks that still have sufficient capacity could be repurposed for routine administrative tasks. It would also allow for the planning and design of recycling facilities in ways that minimised the carbon footprint of the disposal.

In the long run, in particular post-disposal, the existence of the database of assets could unlock a more circular procurement economy, as the materials of disposed assets could be reused for the building of other assets. In that regard, there seem to be some quick wins to be had in the construction sector, but having access to more and better information would probably also serve as a catalyst for similar approaches in other sectors.

Conclusion

Building a database on existing public sector-used assets as the outcome of earlier procurement exercises is not an easy or cheap task. However, in my view, it would have transformative potential and could generate sustainability gains not only aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of future public expenditure but, more importantly, at correcting or somehow compensating for the current environmental impacts of the way the public sector operates. This could make a major difference in accelerating emissions reductions and should consequently be a matter of sufficient priority for the public sector to engage in this exercise. In my view, it should be a matter of high priority.

* A Sanchez-Graells, ‘Some public procurement challenges in supporting and delivering smart urban mobility: procurement data, discretion and expertise’, in M Finck, M Lamping, V Moscon & H Richter (eds), Smart Urban Mobility – Law, Regulation, and Policy, MPI Studies on Intellectual Property and Competition Law (Berlin, Springer, 2020) forthcoming. Available on SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=3452045.

** A Sanchez-Graells, ‘Data-driven procurement governance: two well-known elephant tales’ (2019) Communications Law, forthcoming. Available on SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3440552.

*** A Sanchez-Graells, ‘Transparency and competition in public procurement: A comparative view on a difficult balance’, in K-M Halonen, R Caranta & A Sanchez-Graells (eds), Transparency in EU Procurements: Disclosure within public procurement and during contract execution, vol 9 EPL Series (Edward Elgar 2019) 33-56. Available on SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3193635.

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This blog was written by Cabot Institute member Professor Albert Sanchez-Graells, Professor of Economic Law (University of Bristol Law School).

Albert Sanchez-Graells

Privacy paradoxes, digital divides and secure societies

Posted on May 15, 2018April 13, 2023 by janet.crompton

More and more, we are living our lives in the online space. The development of wearable technology, automated vehicles, and the Internet of Things means that our societies are becoming increasingly digitized. Technological advances are helping monitor city life, target resources efficiently, and engage with citizens more effectively in so-called smart cities. But as with all technological developments, these substantial benefits are accompanied by multiple risks and challenges.

The Wannacry attack. The TalkTalk data breach. The Cambridge Analytica scandal. Phishing emails. Online scams. The list of digital threats reported by the media is seemingly endless. To tackle these growing threats, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) was established in the UK in 2016 with the aim of making ‘the UK the safest place to live and do business online’. But with the increasing complexity of online life, connected appliances, and incessant data collection, how do people navigate these challenges in their day-to-day lives? As a psychologist, I am interested in how people consider and make decisions regarding these digital risks and how we can empower people to make more informed choices going forward.

The privacy paradox

People often claim that privacy is important to them. However, research shows that they are often willing to trade that privacy for short-term benefits. This incongruence between people’s self-reported attitudes and their behaviour has been termed the ‘privacy paradox’. The precise reasons for this are uncertain, but are likely to be a combination of lack of knowledge, competing goals and priorities, and the fact that maintaining privacy can be, well, difficult.

Security is often not an individual’s primary goal, instead being secondary to other tasks that they are trying to complete. For instance, accessing a particular app, sharing location data to find directions, or communicating on the move with friends and colleagues. Using these online services, however, often requires a trade-off with regards to privacy. This trade-off may be unclear, communicated through incomprehensible terms and conditions, or simply unavoidable for the user. Understanding what drives people to make these privacy trade-offs, and under what conditions, is a growing research area.

The digital divide

As in other areas of life, access to technology across society is not equal. Wearable technology and smart phones can be expensive. People may not be familiar with computers or have low levels of digital literacy. There are also substantial ethical implications about how such data may be used that are still being debated. For instance, how much will the information captured and analysed about citizens differ across socio-economic groups?

Research has also shown that people are differentially susceptible to cyber crime, with generational differences apparent (although, not always in the direction that you would expect). Trust in the institutions that handle digital data may vary across communities. Existing theories of societal differences, such as the Cultural Theory of Risk, are increasingly being applied to information security behaviour. Understanding how different groups within society perceive, consider, and are differentially exposed to, digital risks is vital if the potential benefits of such technologies are to be maximised in the future.

Secure societies – now and in the future

Regulation: The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force on the 25 May 2018. Like me, you may have been receiving multiple emails from companies informing you how they use your data, or asking your permission to keep it. This regulation is designed to help people manage their privacy and understand who has access to their data, and why. It also allows for substantial fines to be imposed if personal data is not managed adequately or if data breaches are not reported to authorities in a timely manner.

Secure by default: There is a growing recognition that products should have security built-in. Rather than relying on us, the human user, to understand and manage security settings on the various devices that we own, such devices should be ‘secure by default’. Previous considerations of humans as the ‘weakest link’ in cyber security are being replaced with an understanding that people have limited time, expertise and ability to manage security. The simplified password guidance provided by the NCSC provides a good example of this (7). Devices, applications and policies should take the onus off the user as much as possible.

Education and communication: People need to be educated about online risks in an engaging, relevant and targeted way. Such risks can be perceived as abstract and distant from the individual, and can be difficult to understand at the technical level. I was recently paired with an artist as part of Creative Reactions 2018 (an art exhibition running in Hamilton House 11 – 22 May 2018) to portray my research in this area to members of the public in a different way. Understanding how best to communicate digital risks to diverse audiences who engage with the online world in a range of different contexts is crucial. In this regard, there is much to be learned from risk communication approaches used in climate change, public health, and energy sectors.

Overall, there is much to be optimistic about. A renewed focus on empowering people to understand digital risks and make informed decisions, supported by regulation, secure design and considerations of ethical issues. Only by understanding how people make decisions regarding online activities and emerging technologies, and providing them with the tools to manage their privacy and security effectively, can the opportunities provided by a digital society be fully realised in cities of the future.

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This blog has been written by Cabot Institute member Dr Emma Williams, a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow in Digital Innovation and Well-being in the School of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol.