Challenges: environmental design for pervasive computing systems

We argue that pervasive computing offers not only tremendous opportunities and exciting research challenges but also possible negative environmental impacts, particularly in terms of physical waste and energy consumption. These environmental impacts will come under increasing government and consumer scrutiny, and like other disciplines (e.g. architecture, transportation), pervasive computing will have to adapt accordingly. Further, we argue that software-related issues will play an increasing role in reducing the environmental impact of computing. We thus propose that an important challenge for pervasive computing is to develop research in new architectures, design methodologies, metrics, algorithms and operating systems to minimize these impacts. We then discuss specific research issues and questions that arise in three phases of the device lifecycle: minimizing resource usage for manufacture and operation, maximizing device lifetime, and improving recyclability.