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ICT powers down

3 June 2009

An example of EVO in action.

The Monash e-Research Centre (MeRC) and Faculty of Information Technology are working with international researchers to provide more innovative, environmentally-friendly information and communication technology (ICT) services.

With the ICT industry contributing global carbon emissions equal to that of the entire aviation industry, MeRC and the Faculty of Information Technology recently hosted Professor Larry Smarr via High Definition Interactive Video link from the University of California San Diego (UCSD), to discuss how innovative ICT could be used to reduce, rather than add, to global emission reduction targets.

Professor Smarr, a pioneer in the ICT industry, said UCSD was currently trialling a number of initiatives including the increased use of online collaboration tools to reduce the need for researchers to travel, pre-cooling of computer servers to reduce energy use and the development of intelligent computers that have the ability to power down.

He also discussed collaborative projects between researchers and industry that could improve on current technology such as the use of sensor technology that would allow cars to communicate and thus avoid traffic congestion, and intelligent power grids that could interact with electronic devices.

Director of the Monash e-Research Centre Professor Paul Bonnington said it was important that researchers, government and industry worked proactively together on ICT.

"For its part, Monash is working on a number of strategies to reduce its environmental footprint," Professor Bonnington said.

"New high-performance computing servers have seen our power use and cooling requirements reduce by 90 per cent in the last six years.

"We are also seeing an increase in the number of conferences and meetings that are being held via high-speed EVO video conferencing and transformational high-definition interactive video conferencing."

MeRC was established in 2005 to help researchers to collaborate with international counterparts by opening pathways to the latest communications technology.