IoT and Sustainability Perspectives

As this video has highlighted, and has has been signaled throughout this short course, the connection between IoT and Sustainability extends beyond just the use of technology to provide data to inform decision making for more efficient and sustainable outcomes

Instead, there are many ways that sustainable perspectives can be considered.

Technology

It is important to think about the sustainability of the technology itself – how can sustainability be considered in the design, manufacturing, and distribution of hardware such as devices and sensors, as well as components of this technology such as batteries. How are the components of the systems disposed or recycled?

People

Questions about data ethics, ownership and governance are also important sustainability considerations. Who has the rights to data. We covered this in the previous activity this week.

How do we assess Sustainability?

In the video we referred to a particular framework that can help any organisation to find out exactly where they are at relating to the vision of contributing to (or obstructing!) a thriving society that is socially just, economically inclusive and environmentally regenerative: the Future-Fit Business Benchmark.

The Future-Fit Business Benchmark is a non-profit organisation and it’s tools, guidance and documentation are all open source. It gives an answer to what organisations and society should be aiming for, how we can get there and also provides a way of transparently reporting on it in a way that can be fairly and objectively assessed.

Following this video, we are going to look in more detail at Smart Cities as an example of IoT systems that demonstrate many of the key ideas that have been discussed through this course.