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You are here: Home / Archives for Strategic Adaptation / Information Technology

30 April 2015 By David McEwen

Autonomous Vehicles – how a technology disruptor could be good for people and planet

Autonomous Vehicles - how a technology disruptor could be good for people and planetWhy is technology giant Google developing self-driving cars?

For several years, Google has been testing a fleet of autonomous (self-driving) cars. If this seems like a radical departure from their core business of Internet search and advertising, you might be underestimating the depth of their vision. Ultimately, a future of self-driving vehicles could be transformative, benefitting people and planet in a host of ways, though to the detriment of a number of existing industries.

In this first blog in a series on AV’s we look at some of the direct benefits: safety and efficiency.

Safety

Where human drivers are often inaccurate, inconsistent and somewhat irrational, a car with a computer behind the wheel is the opposite. As such, the only accident Google’s fleet of autonomous cars has notched up in nearly a million miles of driving was caused by the driver of another vehicle.

Bristling with sensors that enable the computer to analyse what’s happening around it in three dimensions and 360 degrees, a self-driving car is applying much more rigorous analysis to its driving decisions than a human driver ever could. It never takes its “eyes” off the road to change the radio station, shout at the kids in the back seat or furtively check a text message on its phone, meaning no concentration lapses. So they’re pretty safe (unless the computer ever crashes).

Fewer accidents would ease the stress on emergency services and hospitals, although government revenues would dip to the extent that there would be fewer speeding and DUI fines issued. Of course, fewer tickets means less cases to be contested, freeing up the courts for more serious infringements. It would also mean the end of arguments about who is going to be the designated (non drinking) driver. And clearly, both the smash repair and taxi industries could be adversely affected.

Efficiency

Where human drivers often rev their engines, accelerate and brake heavily, frequently exceed the most efficient speed given the aerodynamics of their vehicle and generally drive unevenly, a computer can be programmed to optimise fuel efficiency. So that’s an initial tick for the environment.

Network the car to traffic control systems and real time traffic data (such as Google already collects from users of its phones and Maps app), and the computer can now optimise your route to avoid traffic congestion, saving both time and fuel.

And things get really interesting when you start to get a sizeable number of autonomous vehicles on the roads. If they can sense and talk to each other, then road congestion would really ease up – they’d be able to negotiate lane merges and intersections more smoothly; pull away from traffic lights in unison and so on. In turn, traffic control systems could take data from cars and use it to synchronise traffic light sequences in real time along major routes. Following distances could be reduced between autonomous vehicles, since each car in a contiguous convoy would know the intentions of the others: only the lead AV would need to maintain a traditional safe distance to the human-driven vehicle in front.

These innovations could significantly increase the capacity of existing roads and again reduce journey times and fuel or energy wastage. And on roads away from high pedestrian or cyclist zones, speed limits for AV’s could potentially be increased.

Benefits multiplying

In this post we’ve only scratched the surface of the profound impacts broad adoption of AV’s could have. In the next instalment of this series we’ll look at potential impacts to the way we design cities plus how the effects might be felt in other parts of the transportation sector.

But back to the question of where it fits into Google’s strategy?

Well, one reason is that if you no longer need to devote your attention to driving, it could be pretty boring being chauffeured by your car to your destination. And to Google that means idle eyeballs looking for content and therefore potentially being exposed to ads. AV’s are likely to feature sophisticated entertainment, app and browsing options.

 

Talk to Adaptive Capability today about what the future means for your business.

Image credit: Liushengfilm/ShutterStock

Filed Under: Climate Change Adaptation, Information Technology, Strategic Adaptation, Transportation

30 August 2014 By David McEwen

Reining in Runaway Software Inefficiency

Data Centre

Many organisations are investing in making their Internet and IT infrastructure more energy efficient. But in the search for sustainability, a hardware and data centre-centric approach may be missing the point.

Recently, Adaptive Capability was asked to comment on an Australian government initiative to improve the energy efficiency of data centres.  The discussion report proposes a number of sensible suggestions including applying energy efficiency ratings and/or minimum standards to data centre facilities and the IT equipment they house.  However, we wondered if these approaches obscured a much broader opportunity for transforming the IT industry to a more sustainable footing.

What we’re seeing in the data centre space is a run away freight train of more and more processing power and storage globally, supporting all the amazing web apps that people suddenly cannot live without, coupled with corporates collecting vast amounts of “big data” to try to get new insights about their customers and products.

Fundamentally, energy demand in data centres is a behavioural problem linked to our use of technology.  While we’re not going to be able to change that very easily, buying more energy efficient servers or improving the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of our data centres seems to to be like putting a band aid on a cancer victim. We think, however, that without trying to tackle the apps/big data juggernaut, there is something that governments could do that might have a more sustained impact

As a long term representative of a technical working group for the Australian government’s NABERS (National Australian Built Environment Rating System) we note that the data centre rating tool released in 2013 made significant compromises in attempting to come up with a measure of the efficiency of “useful computing output”.  Measuring hardware efficiency improvements in metrics such as megaflops or disk I/O (input/output) per Watt (W) is relatively easy but the working group didn’t manage to figure out a way to build a viable, assessable metric that would serve as a proxy for, for example, “emails delivered per W” or, more usefully, “tax returns processed per W” or “Facebook posts per W”.

That’s where we think a lot more work is required: tackling the efficiency of computer software itself (as well as the way people use it).

The inefficiency of software is, we believe, directly linked to the continued realisation of Moore’s Law, which has effectively led to a doubling of compute power (typically for about the same or lower cost) every couple of years for the last 50 years.  This has created a software development culture that encourages “bloat-ware”: there is no need for coders to cut resource efficient code because a faster computer or device with more RAM (Random Access Memory) and storage is released every few months. Meanwhile there’s money to be made in adding new features (whether they’re needed or not) and churning out new versions of ever more resource hungry software every couple of years.

Inefficient code (and lazy operating systems that allow a build up of “system detritus” and memory leakage) benefits the hardware suppliers since it creates an impetus for people to upgrade their devices on a regular basis, cementing a mutually-beneficial relationship between the hardware and software worlds.

Many organisations typically figure on replacing compute equipment within three years (and many people replace their mobile devices more frequently in line with two year phone plans), creating a mountain of eWaste with huge ecological impacts in terms of embodied energy, CO2e emissions and resource depletion.  Whereas you’ll typically get at least 50 years of economic value out of a building, meaning the embodied energy is usually significantly lower than the energy in use, in the case of computing hardware the equation is probably a lot closer to parity or worse and the lifecycle operating energy costs of a server typically exceed the purchase price.

If we are serious about tackling ICT energy efficiency we need to start with the software industry.  Universities should be teaching resource-efficient software development.  There should be measures to encourage applications and operating systems that run comfortably on older hardware. Major software and hardware companies (which are typically US based, so international cooperation would be required) could be investigated to see whether there is any evidence of anti-consumer collusion in perpetuating the Moore’s Law-driven spiral of software upgrade necessitating hardware upgrade. Leaders in sustainable computing (i.e. maximising the longevity and efficient use of compute resources) should be identified and celebrated.

Consumer education is also important to help people understand how their use of technology is leading to inefficiency. Something analogous to the former Australian Labour Government’s “black balloons” campaign but associated with the energy costs of each photo they upload to Facebook; each Google search; even the extra bytes of storage associated with their email signature file and the near ubiquitous “Please consider the environment before printing this message” sign off.

We recommend the objective of government policy in this area should be, on the one hand, to minimise the amount of hardware and associated infrastructure required to perform a particular function, but also, critically, to prolong the economic life of that investment in hardware and infrastructure.

Talk to Adaptive Capability today about ways to safe guard your organisation’s future.

Filed Under: Australian Government Climate, Climate Change Mitigation, Ecological Footprint Measurement, Information Technology, Software, Strategic Adaptation

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