Dagstuhl Seminar 27421
Plan A: Planetary Boundaries-Aware Computing
( Oct 17 – Oct 22, 2027 )
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https://www.dagstuhl.de/27421
Organizers
- Esha Choukse (Microsoft Research - Redmond, US)
- Yi Ding (Purdue University - West Lafayette, US)
- Timo Hönig (Ruhr-Universität Bochum, DE)
- Shaolei Ren (University of California - Riverside, US)
- Mohammad Shahrad (University of British Columbia - Vancouver, CA)
Contact
- Marsha Kleinbauer (for scientific matters)
- Susanne Bach-Bernhard (for administrative matters)
The rapid expansion of Internet-scale computing driven by artificial intelligence and large language models is transforming society while creating unprecedented environmental impacts. Inspired by the influential Planetary Boundaries framework in global sustainability policy that identifies nine critical Earth system processes including climate change, fresh-water reduction, and change in biosphere integrity, we must ensure that future computer systems operate within Earth’s safe operating space – there is no Planet B. The Dagstuhl Seminar “Plan A: Planetary Boundaries-Aware Computing” unites multi-impact sustainability with system-level control, moving beyond energy to include carbon emissions, water consumption, biodiversity loss, and both operational and embodied lifecycle impacts.
This seminar explores the topic of sustainability in computer science from a practical perspective through four complementary topics. Focus Topic 1 “New Metrics and Models for Sustainability” addresses how we measure impacts beyond energy and carbon emissions – water consumption, biodiversity, material consumption, and life-cycle impacts – and how we set boundaries, handle uncertainties, and balance performance, correctness, and security. Focus Topic 2 “Integrating Sustainability as an Optimization Criterion” examines algorithms and workflows – particularly in the field of AI/ML – that treat sustainability as a core objective alongside accuracy, latency, and robustness in training, inference, planning, and deployment. Focus Topic 3 “Sustainability-Conscious Software Systems” addresses operating systems, runtimes, cloud platforms, compilers, and developer tools that make sustainability aspects visible and actionable in software/system design and implementation. Focus Topic 4 “Hardware Architecture for Sustainability” addresses accelerators, reconfigurable and approximate hardware architectures, as well as lifecycle issues – from embedded impacts to the lifespan, reparability, and reusability of hardware. The goal is to exchange experiences, identify open research questions, and outline concrete next steps for planetary-boundaries awareness across the computing stack.
Creative Commons BY 4.0
Esha Choukse, Yi Ding, Timo Hönig, Shaolei Ren, and Mohammad Shahrad
Related Seminars
Classification
- Computers and Society
- Emerging Technologies
- Systems and Control
Keywords
- sustainable computing
- ressource awareness
- power/energy/carbon efficiency
