Reference no: EM131924423

Integrate sustainability in ICT planning and design projects

This unit describes the skills and knowledge required to integrate sustainability concepts and policies into information and communications technology (ICT) planning and design projects.

These projects typically involve upgrades of equipment hardware and software or new installations of next generation networks (NGN) using emerging technologies.

1. Prepare to integrate sustainability into planning and design stages of ICT project Evaluate suitable ICT projects into which sustainability can be integrated

Negotiate with stakeholders to establish extent to which sustainability is to be integrated

Research and identify suitable technology solutions applicable to project

Gather power consumption data on ICT equipment required for energy audit based on agreed standard

2. Devise strategies for incorporating sustainability into ICT project Determine and oversee implementation of short term technology solutions to achieve reduction of power consumption

Initiate and progress sustainable management principles that result in reduced environmental impact

Establish, regularly review and improve key performance indicators (KPI) on sustainability performance

Incorporate innovative planning and design rules for ICT projects that foster sustainability and environmental best practice

3. Analyse energy audit data Identify energy usage within scope of ICT project and provide detailed report

Estimate potential energy savings and payback periods for recommended actions

Estimate carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions for nominated project

Evaluate estimated CO₂ emissions with comparable benchmarks

Make recommendations in order of priority and give estimates of implementation costs on integration of sustainability for other ICT projects

Assessment Requirements

To complete this unit, students are required to complete:

Element 1 - Integrate sustainability into planning and design stages of ICT project

The global climate is changing, largely due to the observed increases in human produced greenhouse gases. It is estimated that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) contributes around 2-2.5 per cent (Gartner) of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These percentages are likely to grow as ICT becomes more widely available. At the same time, ICT can significantly help reduce climate change by:

a) Promoting the development of more energy efficient devices, applications and networks;

b) Encouraging environmentally friendly design, and

c) Reducing the carbon footprint of ICT

The DMAIC Methodology

The DMAIC methodology includes five steps that include; Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control. Here is some information regarding each step.

Define: Define is the first step in the process. In this step, it is important to define specific goals in achieving outcomes that are consistent with the demands of EMP.

Measure: In order to determine whether or not defects have been reduced, you need a base measurement. In this step, accurate measurements of the ICT devices and their energy consumption will be made and relevant data collected so that future comparisons can be measured to determine whether or not defects have been reduced.

Analyze: Analysis is extremely important to determine relationships and the factors of causality.

Improve: Making improvements or optimizing processes based on measurements and analysis can ensure that defects are lowered and processes are streamlined.

Control: This is the last step in the DMAIC methodology. Control ensures that any variances stand out and are corrected before they can influence a process negatively causing defects. Controls can be in the form of pilot runs to determine if the processes are capable and then once data is collected, a process can transition into standard production. However, continued measurement and analysis must ensue to keep processes on track and free of defects below the Six Sigma limit.

Activity 1:

Please read the paper

Paper - ICT for Sustainable Development by B. Charles Henry

Question 1: How changes in IT affect sustainability practices in organizations:

Question 2: How IT can improve sustainable development?

Question 3: What policy initiatives can improve sustainability?

Assessment 1

You are required to build and deploy an eLearning platform infrastructure in a data center. You need to deploy:
1. One Database Server
2. One Application Server
3. Two web servers
4. One Firewall
5. One Router

You then need to deploy in the office, following equipment:
1. Five Workstations for software design team
2. Two Workstations of a testing team
3. Two switches

Task 1. Evaluate how sustainability can be integrated in this infrastructure deployment.

Task 2. Identify your stakeholders

Task 3. With your manager, you need to negotiate how to integrate sustainability in the project, prepare your recommendations for her.

Task 4. What sustainable technology solutions can you deploy for this project? (consider virtualization).

Task 5. What power consumption figures you would be looking at?

Part - 2:

Activity
Please read ‘Carbon and Computers in Australia' a report by ACS, provided in your Resources. You have two hours to finish the reading. Discuss the report with fellow students in a group.

Assessment 2

Provide Answers to following Questions based on your reading of the report:
1. What are Smart Grids?
2. How teleworking and telecommuting are different? What is the environmental advantage in teleworking and telecommuting?
3. How collaboration tools can contribute towards sustainable ICT projects?
4. What are the figures of energy consumption of different devices in Australia ? As per the report.
5. What is the ICT's total carbon footprint and how it can be reduced?

Activity and Assessment 3

Please read ‘Green Computing Techniques to Power Management and Energy Efficiency' from your resources, discuss in groups (2-4 students) and answer following questions:

1. What does it mean by high power consumption in an ICT context?
2. What power and energy management techniques can be adopted in ICT management to reduce power consumption?
3. Describe power management techniques in:
a. Hardware and Firmware Level
b. Operating System Level
c. Virtualization Level
d. Data Centre Level

Assessment 4 - Case Study

Global Switch is a Worldwide Data Centre Services Provider.

Now consider a scenario where you are to deploy a small data centre of 15-20 servers, storage and network gear to run e-Learning services of AIBT. What sustainability policy will you recommend for this project? You shall write one page on policy recommendations.

Assessment 5
Activity : Please read Mckinsey report on how to cut carbon emissions and costs in data centres, included in your resources. Please discuss your learnings in a group of 2-3 students.

Questions:
1. What does it mean by Carbon Footprint? How data centres emit carbon in the environment?
2. How can we manage IT assets to improve Carbon footprint?

Assessment 6

Question: What is the carbon foot print of Dell Latitude E6400 laptop in US? Question: How power generation methods affect GHG emissions?

Assessment 7

Please read the report by Fujitsu on Australian Benchmark on ICT Sustainability, included in your resources.
Question. What is the formula given in this report? or measuring ICT energy usage.

Question . If you have 30 laptops, 3 printers, and 2 servers in your environment, what would be total energy consumption according to method specified in this paper? Please mention your assumptions. (hint: Check page 21)

Question . What is PUE and how to calculate PUE?

Attachment:- Assignment.rar