Resource and energy efficient software

To help con­sumers find envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly and ener­gy-sav­ing prod­ucts, the well-known Blue Angel eco-label now also rec­og­nizes prod­ucts in the field of infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy (IT). For the first time, a soft­ware prod­uct, the doc­u­ment view­er “Oku­lar”, has now also been cer­ti­fied with the Blue Angel. The under­ly­ing cri­te­ria of this “Blue Angel for Soft­ware” were sig­nif­i­cant­ly co-devel­oped by researchers of the Envi­ron­men­tal Cam­pus Birken­feld of Tri­er University.

Cars, build­ings, and even indus­tri­al oper­a­tions require ener­gy and thus, as is well known, con­tribute to the green­house effect when this ener­gy is pro­vid­ed by fos­sil fuels. Less well known is that dig­i­ti­za­tion also has an “eco­log­i­cal foot­print.” Stream­ing movies, the pro­duc­tion of smart­phones, com­mu­ni­ca­tion via mes­sen­ger — all of this also requires ener­gy and raw mate­ri­als. To help con­sumers find envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly and ener­gy-sav­ing prod­ucts, the well-known Blue Angel eco-label now also rec­og­nizes prod­ucts in the field of infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy (IT). For the first time, a soft­ware prod­uct, the doc­u­ment view­er “Oku­lar”, has now also been cer­ti­fied with the Blue Angel. The under­ly­ing cri­te­ria of this “Blue Angel for Soft­ware” were sig­nif­i­cant­ly co-devel­oped by researchers of the Envi­ron­men­tal Cam­pus Birken­feld of Tri­er University.

Now the team led by Prof. Dr. Ste­fan Nau­mann, head of the “Envi­ron­men­tal and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Infor­mat­ics” work­ing group at the Insti­tute for Soft­ware Sys­tems, has also pro­vid­ed prac­ti­cal sup­port for the appli­ca­tion process for the eye­piece soft­ware in the form of mea­sure­ments and advice. This was done as part of a coop­er­a­tion of stu­dent projects with the open source com­mu­ni­ty KDE, the devel­op­ers of the doc­u­ment viewer.

“We are very pleased to receive our first award. Through the stu­dents’ mea­sure­ments and analy­ses along the award cri­te­ria and the good coop­er­a­tion with the com­mu­ni­ty, KDE was able to suc­cess­ful­ly apply for the eco-label.”

- Prof. Dr. Ste­fan Naumann

At the same time, the stu­dents of the com­put­er sci­ence pro­grams on cam­pus learn a lot about soft­ware devel­op­ment, effi­cien­cy of pro­grams and their use.

Since KDE’s prod­uct range includes many more pro­grams, the “KDE-Eco” project will devel­op a plat­form that will help many more open soft­ware prod­ucts to be mea­sured and cer­ti­fied. The com­put­er sci­ence research at the Envi­ron­men­tal Cam­pus wants to con­tin­ue and expand this coop­er­a­tion. Such projects are direct­ly inte­grat­ed into the Envi­ron­men­tal and Busi­ness Infor­mat­ics or Applied Infor­mat­ics and Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence degree pro­grams. “This means that even first-year stu­dents can work direct­ly on such projects,” says Nau­mann, who is also head of the Depart­ment of Com­put­er Sci­ence at the Envi­ron­men­tal Cam­pus Birkenfeld.