Lundqvist, Torbjörn

Title

Visioner om IKT i arbetslivet – från distansarbete till arbete när som helst och var som helst?

Published in

Arbetsrapport/Working paper, Institutet för Framtidsstudier 2010:14, Stockholm.
ISSN: 1652-120X
ISBN: 978-91-85619-75-7

Abstract

This report discusses various aspects of telework and virtual organization based on international research. Visions of a future, where a large proportion of the workforce is working on a distance from the office, have been around since the 1970s. However, telework has not received the extent that many believed and hoped it will. Research in this area shows that there are barriers to overcome before telework will develop into a dominating phenomenon in the labor market. However, the technical progress in ICT has also led to new visions of a working life where people work anytime from anywhere. Work is becoming increasingly mobile. Probably we will see an evolutionary trend towards greater flexibility, including telework and virtual organizations, as a long-term effect of the IT revolution.

Sammanfattning

I den här rapporten diskuteras olika aspekter av distansarbete och virtuell organisation utifrån den internationella forskningen. Visionerna om en framtid där en stor del av arbetskraften arbetar på distans har funnits sedan 1970-talet. Distansarbetet har inte fått den omfattning som många trott och hoppats på. Forskningen på området visar att det finns hinder för att distansarbete ska utvecklas till ett betydande fenomen på arbetsmarknaden. Men den tekniska utvecklingen inom IKT har också lett till nya visioner om ett arbetsliv där man arbetar när som helst från var som helst. Arbetet blir alltmer mobilt genom att tekniken gör det möjligt att ta det med när vi förflyttar oss. Sannolikt kommer vi att se en evolutionär utveckling mot ökad flexibilitet som ett långsiktigt resultat av IT-revolutionen och gradvis normalisering av distansarbete och virtuell organisation.

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Moberg, Åsa
Borggren, Clara
Finnveden, Göran
Tyskeng, Sara

Title

Environmental impacts of electronic invoicing

Published in

Progress in Industrial Ecology 7, 93-113 (2010), doi: 10.1504/PIE.2010.036044

Abstract

Climate change threatens ecosystems and health and may cause severe economic impacts. All sectors of society need to act. New solutions based on information and communication technology (ICT) have been proposed to enable action. One possible conversion is from paper invoices to electronic invoices. The aim of this article is to increase current knowledge about the advantages and disadvantages of a possible total transition from all paper invoicing to all electronic invoicing in Sweden regarding cumulative energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions. A screening life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed as a life cycle perspective should preferably be used when considering environmental impacts of products. The results of the study show that there are benefits from transition to electronic invoices regarding cumulative energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions. The magnitude of the benefits is mainly dependent on the amount of paper used for the traditional invoices and whether the electronic invoices are printed.

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Räsänen, Minna
Moberg, Åsa
Picha, Malin
Borggren, Clara

Title

Meeting at a distance: Experiences of media companies in Sweden

Published in

Technology in Society 32, 264-273, (2010), doi:10.1016/j.techsoc.2010.10.002

Abstract

Solutions based on information and communication technology (ICT) have been put forward as a possible means to decrease greenhouse gases, e.g. through replacing travel. However, their success depends on how the ICT solutions are implemented and put into practice. This study sought to identify and discuss conditions for business meetings at a distance. Practices that facilitate and those that prevent meeting at a distance were examined in four Swedish media companies. Time and financial savings were identified as the main forces driving companies and individuals to consider meeting at a distance. Appropriate technology, infrastructure and confidence in using and handling the equipment were also necessary for meeting at a distance. Environmental considerations within the companies appeared to be a side-effect rather than a direct driver. Understanding such conditions is crucial in striving for change. It is suggested that companies consider the everyday practices their employees are engaged in and reflect on the broader context within which these practices take place.

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Bonanni, L.
Ebner, H.
Hockenberry, M.
Sayan, B.
Brandt, N.
Csikszentmihàlyi, N.
Ishii, H.
Turpeinen, M.
Young, S.
Zapico, J.

Title

The Open Sustainability Project: A Linked Data Approach to LCA

Published in

Abstract presented at LCAX, Portland, 2-4 November 2010.

Abstract

The proprietary nature of LCA tools and information limits widespread adoption of sustainability measures. We introduce the Open Sustainability Project (OSP), a Linked Data resource for broadening access to LCA in an effort to increase the transparency and accuracy of environmental impact assessments.The OSP applies Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) principles and Linked Data structures to LCA standards and reporting so that communities including students, SME’s and the general public can participate in the assessment and verification of sustainability practices. The highly flexible data format allows disparate data sources and assessments to be compared along an open standard compliant with ISO 14048 reporting.In addition, the OSP makes available a free database of Life Cycle Assessment data using an approach based on Linked Data and RESTful interfaces which supports the development of rich third-party applications for specific user groups and industries. This novel combination of linked data and web-based tools is inherently transparent so that LCA practices can be standardized, compared and verified by a broad community.The OSP is an international collaboration between academics, government and industry groups leveraging expertise in LCA, Open Data and web-based tools for sustainability. Our first Open Source and Open Data web sustainability tools have confirmed the potential to engage a wider audience, with over two thousand registered users, three thousand environmental assessments performed and over 330,000 page views from more than 75 countries since September 2009. The OSP aims to expand reach of LCA through a free and open Application Programming Interface(API) to support distributed development of third-party applications for sustainability assessment through the emerging metrics for social and environmental sustainability (a free LCA “App Store”). These applications are intended to disseminate LCA standards, encourage transparency in environmental reporting and leverage Collective Intelligence in the collection, publication and verification of LCA.The OSP aims to transform LCA into a collaborative process where data collection, analysis, assessment and reporting benefit from the feedback and ideas of a growing worldwide LCA community.

Zapico, Jorge L.
Turpeinen, Marko
Brandt, Nils

Title

Greenalytics: A tool for mash-up life cycle assessment of websites

Published in

Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Informatics for Environmental Protection.
Shaker Verlag,  Aachen, Germany, 2010.
ISBN: 978-3-8322-9458-8

Abstract

The environmental impact of internet is growing, reaching an estimated 1.4% of world greenhouse emissions. This impact is hidden for both users and web developers. Understanding and analyzing the environmental footprint of a website is not an easy task. The impacts are distributed through multiple hardware networks and a global user base, making the individual impacts difficult to allocate. This article presents the development of a functional application for generating automatic life cycle assessments for web sites based on mashing-up information. This application has the aim of making the impact of websites visible, allowing the instant analysis of their carbon footprint using existing analytics data and presenting it in an understandable and transparent way. The development process is presented with detailed information about how the calculations are performed. The results are discussed around two different cases, focusing on the challenges of calculating the server side impact and the possibilities for improvement.

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Greenalytics website

http://www.greenalytics.org

Zapico, Jorge L.
Kjelkerud, David
Berggren, Henrik
Turpeinen, Marko
Brandt, Nils

Title

Carbon.to: Improving the understanding of carbon dioxide information.

Published in

Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Informatics for Environmental Protection.
Shaker Verlag,  Aachen, Germany, 2010.
ISBN: 978-3-8322-9458-8

Abstract

We are nowadays increasingly presented with information about greenhouse gases in our everyday life. However there seems to be a gap between this increase in the exposure to carbon dioxide information and the understanding of how to interpret it, making behavioral change difficult. This article presents examples of how different applications have dealt with this problem by representing the carbon dioxide information in different ways. Based on the existing examples, an application called carbon.to was developed and released. This service tries to improve the understanding of carbon dioxide information by simulation in a playful way. Feedback from the users points towards that the gap in understanding existed and that carbon.to was successful in helping closing it.

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Carbon.to website

http://carbon.to

Malmodin, Jens
Moberg, Åsa
Lundén, Dag
Finnveden, Göran
Lövehagen, Nina

Title

Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Operational Electricity Use in the ICT and Entertainment & Media Sectors

Published in

Journal of Industrial Ecology 14, 770-790, (2010), doi: 10.1111/j.1530-9290.2010.00278.x

Abstract

The positive and negative environmental impacts of information and communication technology (ICT) are widely debated. This study assesses the electricity use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to the ICT and entertainment & media (E&M) sectors at sector level, including end users, and thus complements information on the product level. GHGs are studied in a life cycle perspective, but for electricity use, only the operational use is considered. The study also considers which product groups or processes are major contributors. Using available data and extrapolating existing figures to the global scale for 2007 reveals that the ICT sector produced 1.3% of global GHG emissions in 2007 and the E&M sector 1.7%. The corresponding figures for global electricity use were 3.9% and 3.2%, respectively. The results indicate that for the ICT sector, operation leads to more GHG emissions than manufacture, although impacts from the manufacture of some products are significant. For the E&M sector, operation of TVs and production of printed media are the main reasons for overall GHG emissions. TVs as well as printed media, with the estimations made here, led to more GHG emissions on a global level in 2007 than PCs (manufacture and operation). A sector study of this type provides information on a macro scale, a perspective easily lost when considering, for example, the product-related results of life cycle assessments. The macro scale is essential to capture changes in total consumption and use. However, the potential of the ICT sector to help decrease environmental impacts from other sectors was not included in the assessment.

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Charlie Gullström (KTH, Architecture)

Title

Presence Design: Mediated Spaces Extending Architecture

Published in

Doctoral thesis,KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Architecture, Stockholm 2010.
TRITA – ARK Akademisk avhandling 2010:3
ISSN 1402-7461
ISRN KTH/ARK AA—10:03—SE
ISBN 978-91-7415-719-2

Abstract

This thesis is a contribution to design-led research and addresses a readership in the fields of architecture as well as in media and communications. In juxtaposing the tools of the designer (e.g. drafting, prototyping, visual/textual/spatial forms of montage) with those of architectural theory, this thesis seeks to extend the disciplinary boundaries of architecture by observing its assimilation of other media practices. Its primary contribution is to architectural design and theory, and its aims are twofold:

Firstly, this thesis applies the concepts of virtual and mediated space to architecture, proposing an extended architectural practice that assimilates the concept of remote presence. Through realized design examples as well as through the history and theory of related concepts, the thesis explores what designing mediated spaces and designing for presence entails for the practicing architect.

As a fusion of architecture and media technology, video-mediated spaces facilitate collaborative practices across spatial extensions while simultaneously fostering novel and environmentally sustainable modes of communication. The impact of presence design on workplace design is examined. As an extended practice also calls for an extended discourse, a preliminary conceptual toolbox is proposed. Concepts are adapted from related visual practices and tested on design prototypes, which arise from the author’s extensive experience in designing work and learning spaces.

Secondly, this thesis outlines presence design as a transdisciplinary aesthetic practice and discusses the potential contribution of architects to a currently heterogeneous research field, which spans media space research, cognitive science, (tele)presence research, interaction design, ubiquitous computing, second-order cybernetics, and computer-supported collaborative work. In spite of such diversity, design and artistic practices are insufficiently represented in the field. This thesis argues that presence research and its discourse is characterised by sharp disciplinary boundaries and thereby identifies a conceptual gap: presence research typically fails to integrate aesthetic concepts that can be drawn from architecture and related visual practices. It is an important purpose of this thesis to synthesize such concepts into a coherent discourse.

Finally, the thesis argues that remote presence through the proposed synthesis of architectural and technical design creates a significantly expanded potential for knowledge sharing across time and space, with potential to expand the practice and theory of architecture itself. The author’s design-led research shows that mediated spaces can provide sufficient audiovisual information about the remote space(s) and other person(s), allowing the subtleties of nonverbal communication to inform the interaction. Further, in designing for presence, certain spatial features have an effect on the user’s ability to experience a mediated spatial extension, which in turn, facilitates mediated presence. These spatial features play an important role in the process through which trust is negotiated, and hence has an impact on knowledge sharing. Mediated presence cannot be ensured by design, but by acknowledging the role of spatial design in mediated spaces, the presence designer can monitor and, in effect, seek to reduce the ‘friction’ that otherwise may inhibit the experience of mediated presence. The notion of ‘friction’ is borrowed from a context of knowledge sharing in collaborative work practices. My expanded use of the term ‘design friction’ is used to identify spatial design features which, unaddressed, may be said to impose friction and thus inhibit and impact negatively on the experience of presence. A conceptual tool-box for presence design is proposed, consisting of the following design concepts: mediated gaze, spatial montage, active spectatorship, mutual gaze, shared mediated space, offscreen space, lateral and peripheral awareness, framing and transparency. With their origins in related visual practices these emerge from the evolution of the concept of presence across a range of visual cultures, illuminating the centrality of presence design in design practice, be it in the construction of virtual pictorial space in Renaissance art or the generative design experiments of prototypical presence designers, such as Cedric Price, Gordon Pask and numerous researchers at MIT Media Lab, Stanford Institute and Xerox PARC.

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Zapico, Jorge L.
Brandt, Nils
Turpeinen, Marko

Title

Environmental Metrics: The Main Opportunity from ICT for Industrial Ecology

Published in

Journal of Industrial Ecology 14, 703-706, (2010),  doi: 10.1111/j.1530-9290.2010.00272.x

Summary

There is a growing interest in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for environmental sustainability, including from academia, industry, and governance. There are still concerns about ICTs’ direct environmental impact, such as energy use and e-waste. The positive effects of using ICT for sustainability, however, are argued to be bigger (Climate Group 2008; Tomlinson 2010), and the corpus of research in this area is growing fast (DiSalvo et al. 2010). We have identified some of the most prominent trends in this research and organized them into three clusters where ICT has a positive impact on environmental problems: optimization, dematerialization, and behavioral change. Metrics, the measurement and accounting of data, are presented as the common ground for all three and therefore a main opportunity that arises from ICT for industrial ecology.

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Moberg, Åsa

Title

Assessment of media and communication from a sustainability perspective

Published in

PhD dissertation
Environmental Strategies Research – fms, Department of Urban Planning and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm 2010.
TRITA-SoM 2010-05
ISSN 1653-6126
ISRN KTH/SoM/10-05/SE
ISBN 978-97-7415-636-2

Abstract

This thesis aims to assess potential environmental impacts of media and communication and to contribute to the development of methods for sustainability assessment. Although the main focus is on printed and electronic media products and environmental impacts, a broader sector analysis is also included and social aspects are discussed. The thesis provides a review of different environmental assessment tools in order to better understand their relationships and the appropriateness of different tools in different situations. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to assess printed and electronic versions of newspapers, books and invoices. Results of the screening LCAs of newspapers and books indicate that when comparing printed and electronic versions there are benefits and drawbacks for both. For news and books read on e-reading devices with energy efficient e-ink screens, the main environmental impacts in the studies stemmed from the production of the device and partly from disposal, with the latter having the potential to reduce some environmental impacts through recycling of materials. However, there are data gaps regarding the production of the e-reading devices, most notably for the e-ink screen and the waste management of obsolete e-reading devices. Existing data on internet energy use are uncertain. The potential impacts from a hypothetical total change from paper invoices to electronic invoices in Sweden were assessed through a screening consequential LCA regarding greenhouse gas emissions and cumulative energy demand.

The results indicate that emissions and energy demand could decrease as a result of a change. The screening LCAs performed indicate that users’ practices could substantially influence the environmental impacts. Key factors which can influence results and comparisons of printed and electronic media products are total use of electronic devices, total use of printed media, amount and type of paper, energy use of electronic devices, potential printing of electronic media, electricity mix, and the system boundaries set for the assessments.

To get a wider perspective, a sector study of the ICT sector and media sector concerning global greenhouse gas emissions and operational electricity use was performed. It was estimated that the contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions in 2007 was roughly 1-2 % for each sector. To assess media and communication products from a sustainability perspective, social aspects should also be covered. The author participated in an international project group on social aspects and LCA, one outcome from which was guidelines for social LCA (S-LCA). In addition to providing guidance for S-LCA, another important role of the guidelines is to facilitate discussions, criticism and proposals for improvement and development of the methodology being developed.

The LCA and sector studies in this thesis are limited to direct and to some extent indirect environmental impacts. Further studies of the environmental impacts of more long-term changes in practices and potential structural changes, as well as potential social impacts, could provide important additional insights. This could increase the possibility of facilitating sustainable practices related to ICT and media.

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List of papers

Paper I
Finnveden G. and Moberg Å. (2005). Environmental systems
analysis methods – an overview. Journal of Cleaner Production 13:1165-
1173.

Paper II
Moberg Å., Johansson M., Finnveden G. and Jonsson A. (2010).
Printed and tablet e-paper newspaper from an environmental
perspective- a screening life cycle assessment. Environmental Impact
Assessment Review 30:3:177-191.

Paper III
Borggren C., Moberg Å. and Finnveden G. Books from an
environmental perspective – Part 1: Environmental impacts of paper
books sold in traditional and internet bookshops. Submitted to
International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment.

Paper IV
Moberg Å., Borggren C. and Finnveden G. Books from an
environmental perspective – Part 2: e-books as an alternative to
paper books. Submitted to International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment.

Paper V
Moberg Å., Borggren C., Finnveden G. and Tyskeng S.
Environmental impacts of electronic invoicing. Accepted with
minor revisions by Progress in Industrial Ecology.

Paper VI
Malmodin J, Moberg Å, Lundén D, Finnveden G. and Lövehagen
N. Greenhouse gas emissions and operational electricity use in the
ICT and entertainment & media sectors. Submitted to Journal of
Industrial Ecology.

Paper VII
Benoit C., Norris G.A., Valdivia S., Ciroth A., Moberg Å., Bos U.,
Prakash S., Ugaya C. and Beck T. (2010). The Guidelines for Social
Life Cycle Assessment of products: Just in time! International Journal
of Life Cycle Assessment, Volume 15, Number 2.

Contact asa.moberg@abe.kth.se if you want to order a paper copy of the thesis!