Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GreenDIGIT (Greener Future Digital Research Infrastructures)
Période du rapport: 2024-03-01 au 2025-08-31
GreenDIGIT tackles the challenge of reducing environmental impact of digital research infrastructures (RIs), which account for a growing share of global greenhouse gas emissions due to their high energy consumption. As research becomes increasingly data-intensive, ensuring that digital infrastructures operate sustainably is essential to align with the European Green Deal and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). GreenDIGIT responds to this challenge by developing an integrated framework that will enhance the sustainability of digital RIs throughout their entire lifecycle.
GreenDIGIT focuses on three major areas: technology innovation, strategic policy development, and capacity building. It established a reference architecture for sustainable RIs, and developing new tools for monitoring, assessing, and optimizing energy efficiency in data centres, cloud infrastructures, and networking components. These solutions will be deployed across four major European digital RIs—EGI, SLICES, SoBigData, and EBRAINS—modelling the entire ESFRI research landscape.
GreenDIGIT also prioritizes scientific workflow optimization, integrating Reproducibility as a Service (RaaS) to help researchers design energy-conscious digital applications while ensuring data and experiment reproducibility. Additionally, it will provide policy recommendations to guide RIs toward sustainable operations, along with training programs and a certification framework to equip RIs with the skills for energy-efficient digital services management.
By combining technological advancements, sustainability-driven policies, and targeted training, GreenDIGIT will not only improve the environmental footprint of participating RIs but also establish scalable best practices for digital RIs across Europe.
GreenDIGIT focuses on three major areas: technology innovation, strategic policy development, and capacity building. It established a reference architecture for sustainable RIs, and developing new tools for monitoring, assessing, and optimizing energy efficiency in data centres, cloud infrastructures, and networking components. These solutions will be deployed across four major European digital RIs—EGI, SLICES, SoBigData, and EBRAINS—modelling the entire ESFRI research landscape.
GreenDIGIT also prioritizes scientific workflow optimization, integrating Reproducibility as a Service (RaaS) to help researchers design energy-conscious digital applications while ensuring data and experiment reproducibility. Additionally, it will provide policy recommendations to guide RIs toward sustainable operations, along with training programs and a certification framework to equip RIs with the skills for energy-efficient digital services management.
By combining technological advancements, sustainability-driven policies, and targeted training, GreenDIGIT will not only improve the environmental footprint of participating RIs but also establish scalable best practices for digital RIs across Europe.
O1: Assess status and trends of low impact computing within 4 DIGIT RIs (EGI, SLICES, SoBigData, EBRAINS) and in the broader digital service provider community of ESFRIs, to produce recommendations and roadmaps for providers for during and beyond the project.
Together, WP3 and WP8 produced the landscape survey, self-assessment questionnaire tools, and first policy recommendations, supporting EU and ESFRI Environmental Sustainability, Green Deal, and SDG17 goals.
O2: Provide reference architecture and design principles, as well as an actionable model for RIs about environmental impact assessment and monitoring, reflecting on the whole RI lifecycle and including the digital infrastructure components and their interaction with the broader environment.
WP4 defined design principles and architectures to reduce environmental impact across digital RI ecosystem. D4.1 delivered a State-of-the-Art analysis of best practices, covering software engineering for scientific applications and international standards on energy efficiency and environmental management. D4.2 produced Architecture Framework for RI Sustainability (AF4RIS), Shared Responsibility Model for Sustainability (SRM4S) with roles and recommendations for RI operators, infrastructure researchers, and users, and RI Lifecycle Model (RILM), and compliance guidelines for European policies, regulations, and with standards.
O3: Develop and validate new and innovative technologies, methods, and tools for digital service providers within European Research Infrastructures through which they can reduce their energy consumptions and overall environmental impact. [Related to WP6, WP7]
T6.1 developed the initial version of metric publication system. T6.2-6.4 conducted initial analysis and algorithms for energy-aware brokering in IoT and scientific applications, estimating available algorithms for central brokering logic. T6.5 started designing and implementing a tool for calculating electricity’s environmental footprint using open data from ENTSO-E. WP7 began at M16, completed initial assessments, and developed the initial brokering architecture design (based on WP4). Technologies from research infrastructures and related partners were identified, alongside demonstrative use cases and workloads.
O4: Develop and provide for researchers technical tools that assist them in the design, execution and sharing of environmental impact aware digital applications with reproducibility, Open Science and FAIR data management considerations.
T5.1 proposed 4 pillar methodologies for reproducible experiments, aligned with D4.2’s reference architecture. It developed virtual research environment (VRE) using Jupyter notebooks, and tools like EcoJupyter dashboard for researcher awareness and scientific workflow optimisation (D5.1). T5.2 created fine-grained energy measurement tools and a Common Information Model (CIM) for energy and environmental impact metrics in federated RIs (D5.2). T5.3 delivered data management tools for VREs, integrating T5.1’s VRE tools with federated data management infrastructure (FDMI) to enhance reproducibility purpose (D5.3). These TRL6 prototypes were open sourced and set a foundation for further extension in WP7 (period 2) to develop the Reproducibility as a Service (RaaS) prototype using building blocks from WP4-WP7.
O5: Educate and support digital service providers in the RI communities about good practices on environmental impact conscious lifecycle management and operation of infrastructures and services
During M1-M18, various means (both physical and digital) were established and utilised to establish a GreenDIGIT brand identity.
Together, WP3 and WP8 produced the landscape survey, self-assessment questionnaire tools, and first policy recommendations, supporting EU and ESFRI Environmental Sustainability, Green Deal, and SDG17 goals.
O2: Provide reference architecture and design principles, as well as an actionable model for RIs about environmental impact assessment and monitoring, reflecting on the whole RI lifecycle and including the digital infrastructure components and their interaction with the broader environment.
WP4 defined design principles and architectures to reduce environmental impact across digital RI ecosystem. D4.1 delivered a State-of-the-Art analysis of best practices, covering software engineering for scientific applications and international standards on energy efficiency and environmental management. D4.2 produced Architecture Framework for RI Sustainability (AF4RIS), Shared Responsibility Model for Sustainability (SRM4S) with roles and recommendations for RI operators, infrastructure researchers, and users, and RI Lifecycle Model (RILM), and compliance guidelines for European policies, regulations, and with standards.
O3: Develop and validate new and innovative technologies, methods, and tools for digital service providers within European Research Infrastructures through which they can reduce their energy consumptions and overall environmental impact. [Related to WP6, WP7]
T6.1 developed the initial version of metric publication system. T6.2-6.4 conducted initial analysis and algorithms for energy-aware brokering in IoT and scientific applications, estimating available algorithms for central brokering logic. T6.5 started designing and implementing a tool for calculating electricity’s environmental footprint using open data from ENTSO-E. WP7 began at M16, completed initial assessments, and developed the initial brokering architecture design (based on WP4). Technologies from research infrastructures and related partners were identified, alongside demonstrative use cases and workloads.
O4: Develop and provide for researchers technical tools that assist them in the design, execution and sharing of environmental impact aware digital applications with reproducibility, Open Science and FAIR data management considerations.
T5.1 proposed 4 pillar methodologies for reproducible experiments, aligned with D4.2’s reference architecture. It developed virtual research environment (VRE) using Jupyter notebooks, and tools like EcoJupyter dashboard for researcher awareness and scientific workflow optimisation (D5.1). T5.2 created fine-grained energy measurement tools and a Common Information Model (CIM) for energy and environmental impact metrics in federated RIs (D5.2). T5.3 delivered data management tools for VREs, integrating T5.1’s VRE tools with federated data management infrastructure (FDMI) to enhance reproducibility purpose (D5.3). These TRL6 prototypes were open sourced and set a foundation for further extension in WP7 (period 2) to develop the Reproducibility as a Service (RaaS) prototype using building blocks from WP4-WP7.
O5: Educate and support digital service providers in the RI communities about good practices on environmental impact conscious lifecycle management and operation of infrastructures and services
During M1-M18, various means (both physical and digital) were established and utilised to establish a GreenDIGIT brand identity.
The proposed architecture including the Shared Responsibility Model for Sustainability (SRM4S) and Sustainability by Design provided a novel approach to systematically target/research and development for future environmentally sustainable digital RIs. WP4-WP5-WP6 Design Workshop further defined GreenDIGIT architecture for RI sustainability.
Both SRMS4S and Sustainability by Design were presented at various forums such as ICRI2024 conference, PREDICT2025 forum, and EGI side event and received valuable feedback for further development of architecture aspects, that were finalised in D4.2.
The questionnaire for the RI Landscape study (T3.1) which provided an important instrument for future studies of the ESFRI RIs, resulting in identification of relevant international and European standards specific to data centre sustainability. In addition, best practice recommendations and requirements for the environmental sustainability of RIs are developed as part of T3.3 and contributed to D3.2.
Both SRMS4S and Sustainability by Design were presented at various forums such as ICRI2024 conference, PREDICT2025 forum, and EGI side event and received valuable feedback for further development of architecture aspects, that were finalised in D4.2.
The questionnaire for the RI Landscape study (T3.1) which provided an important instrument for future studies of the ESFRI RIs, resulting in identification of relevant international and European standards specific to data centre sustainability. In addition, best practice recommendations and requirements for the environmental sustainability of RIs are developed as part of T3.3 and contributed to D3.2.