{"id":6760,"date":"2021-09-28T20:49:46","date_gmt":"2021-09-28T20:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hknow.de\/?p=6760"},"modified":"2023-09-15T17:25:33","modified_gmt":"2023-09-15T17:25:33","slug":"sdia-open-data-hub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hknow.de\/en\/sdia-open-data-hub\/","title":{"rendered":"Transparency meets sustainability: Announcing the SDIA Open Data Hub"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Last month, the High Knowledge GmbH and the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (SDIA) announced<\/span><\/i><\/a> our Open Data Hub, a resource that's meant to boost transparency, trust, and data availability to help researchers, industry, and society realize a sustainable digital economy. It is essentially our answer to the challenge recognized across the sector: that the lack of reliable data is one of the most foundational issues we face in creating a sustainable ICT ecosystem. It's also a way for us to create a new precedent for regulators and policymakers by helping to facilitate inclusive, data-driven policy-making. We at High Knowledge are delighted to share this announcement and invite you to support the Open Data Hub as a Sponsor, Ambassador or Launch Partner.<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>

From the ambitious European Green Deal strategies to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the urgency to make sustainability a central pillar of business strategy has never been greater. This fact was only further reinforced earlier this week with the landmark IPCC <\/span>report,<\/span><\/a> which itself was punctuated by raging wildfires across Southeastern Europe and the recent floods in Western Europe.<\/span><\/p>

Around the world consumers are <\/span>prioritizing<\/span><\/a>sustainability. Study after study demonstrates that adopting sustainability practices <\/span>decreases costs while making businesses more competitive<\/span><\/a>, further reinforcing the fact that sustainability is good for people, profit, and the planet.<\/span><\/p>

For customers especially, sustainability is built on trust and openness. From supply chain management to consumer outreach, building trust is critical to brand promotion and can easily undercut efforts to win over new markets given the speed of information flows. Transparency is a significant facilitator of trust, one that not only has the ability to boost perception but also <\/span>promote innovation<\/span><\/a> . Thus, the value that transparency brings to companies today in demonstrating trustworthiness, helping consumers make informed decisions, and ultimately <\/span>driving<\/span><\/a> sustainability efforts forward cannot be understated. Yet, it requires another key ingredient: data.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Transparency for the digital economy<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Data has been <\/span>labeled<\/span><\/a> as the oil of the 21st century \u2013 a somewhat ironic moniker given that so much of today\u2019s digital ecosystem is still powered by fossil fuels. Or at least that is the <\/span>standard public narrative<\/span><\/a>, despite the digital sector being the <\/span>top purchaser<\/span><\/a> of renewable energy. Are data centers, for instance, the energy hogs they are made out to be or actually pioneering the energy transition?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The answer is paramount, but the dearth of available, trusted, systemic data is one of the greatest challenges to transparency and tracking progress that the digital sector faces \u2013 especially in light of the increasing scrutiny it attracts and the subsequent calls by governments and society to decarbonize. Specifically, we lack reliable, real-time data gathered from facilities such as data centers, products such as Internet-connected devices, or any other part of the digital value chain that can be used to assess its environmental impacts or gauge sustainability targets. That challenge is precisely what the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (<\/span>SDIA<\/span><\/a>) \u2013 a nonprofit network of more than 65 organizations working to catalyze the transition to a sustainable digital economy, which I joined earlier this year \u2013 is working to solve.<\/span><\/p>

To do that, however, we need your help.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>

We are in the process of building an Open Data Hub to chart the path toward a sustainable future and help us realize our <\/span>Roadmap to Sustainable Digital Infrastructure by 2030<\/span><\/a> . Open data hubs are online portals that offer easily accessible datasets to support transparency, industry-wide innovation, and new technologies and business model development.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Inspired by and modeled after similar open data hubs used in other industries, such as <\/span>ENTSO-E<\/span><\/a>, UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) <\/span>Climate Action Note<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>electricityMap<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Climate TRACE<\/span><\/a>, the SDIA Open Data Hub will draw on reliable, real-time data and other information shared by our members and partners along with other interested stakeholders to offer aggregate, anonymized, and standardized industry-wide reporting via an intuitive platform that does not reveal business sensitive information while still creating transparency for governments and society.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The SDIA Open Data Hub intends to capture the full suite of lifecycle metrics outlined in our Roadmap, including emissions, energy consumption, electronic waste, resource consumption, pollution, the embedded carbon of server hardware, and more to deliver, among other things, information. This will not only generate invaluable data such as server\/data center idle (SIC\/DIC) coefficients and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO<\/span>2<\/span>eq) calculations for data center operators, IXP managers, IT hardware providers, fiber- and network operators, consumers, regulators, researchers, and a host of other stakeholders from around the world, but will establish the foundation of our work to create a digital carbon footprint that spans across the entire value chain and continuously assess it.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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SDIA Open Data Hub: Maximum benefit at minimal cost<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"sdia-graphic\"