ICT for Sustainability

How do we want the cities of the future to look like?

Software is a pervasive driver of change in society. Therefore, software professionals need to take a systems perspective and identify leverage points to understand the role of software for transformational change toward sustainability.

Software Engineering for Sustainability: Find the Leverage Points! IEEE Software 2018 (preprint)

I am invested in research that examines the role of Information and Communication Technologies for Sustainability (ICT4S is the common acronym). I’m most interested in the role of software technology, but of course, software is never alone in this.

Most recently, my student Curtis McCord and I examined Sidewalk Lab Toronto’s Smart City project from a critical systems thinking lens (We received a Best Paper award at ICT4S 2019 for that). In an earlier ICT4S paper, my student Dawn Walker and I reflected on a mapping project from the perspective of Sustainability Design.

In an IEEE Software article last year, we used a System Dynamics approach and the concept of Leverage Points to examine what role software can play in sustainability. In an upcoming article in Communications of the ACM, we explore the use of model engineering for sustainability evaluation.