Abstract
Internet of Things (IoT) can help to pave the way to the circular economy and to a more sustainable world by enabling the digitalization of many operations and processes, such as water distribution, preventive maintenance, or smart manufacturing. Paradoxically, IoT technologies and paradigms such as edge computing, although they have a huge potential for the digital transition towards sustainability, they are not yet contributing to the sustainable development of the IoT sector itself. In fact, such a sector has a significant carbon footprint due to the use of scarce raw materials and its energy consumption in manufacturing, operating, and recycling processes. To tackle these issues, the Green IoT (G-IoT) paradigm has emerged as a research area to reduce such carbon footprint; however, its sustainable vision collides directly with the advent of Edge Artificial Intelligence (Edge AI), which imposes the consumption of additional energy. This article deals with this problem by exploring the different aspects that impact the design and development of Edge-AI G-IoT systems. Moreover, it presents a practical Industry 5.0 use case that illustrates the different concepts analyzed throughout the article. Specifically, the proposed scenario consists in an Industry 5.0 smart workshop that looks for improving operator safety and operation tracking. Such an application case makes use of a mist computing architecture composed of AI-enabled IoT nodes. After describing the application case, it is evaluated its energy consumption and it is analyzed the impact on the carbon footprint that it may have on different countries. Overall, this article provides guidelines that will help future developers to face the challenges that will arise when creating the next generation of Edge-AI G-IoT systems.
Highlights
The current digital transformation offers substantial opportunities to industry for building competitive and innovative business models and complex circular supply chains; such a transformation implies severe implications concerning sustainability, since the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry has a significant environmental footprint
As part of the Internet of Things (IoT) Guidelines for Sustainability that were addressed in 2018 by the World Economic Forum, a recommendation to adopt a framework based on the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [1] to evaluate the potential impact and measure the results of the adoption of such recommendations was put forward [2]; in 2010–2019, and considering Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production [1], electronic waste grew by 38% and less than 20% has been recycled
The use of Edge-Artificial Intelligence (AI) provides a solution: edge computing devices are deployed near the IoT end nodes, so lag can be decreased, and IoT node requests are offloaded from the cloud, avoiding potential communications bottlenecks when scaling the system
Summary
The current digital transformation offers substantial opportunities to industry for building competitive and innovative business models and complex circular supply chains; such a transformation implies severe implications concerning sustainability, since the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry has a significant environmental footprint. Agenda for Sustainable Development [1] and to implement the visions of circular economy, it is necessary to provide solutions in an efficient and sustainable way during their whole life cycle Such a sustainable digital transition towards a smart circular economy is enabled by three key technologies: IoT, edge computing, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). As part of the IoT Guidelines for Sustainability that were addressed in 2018 by the World Economic Forum, a recommendation to adopt a framework based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [1] to evaluate the potential impact and measure the results of the adoption of such recommendations was put forward [2]; in 2010–2019, and considering Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production [1], electronic waste grew by 38% and less than 20% has been recycled These technologies have a huge potential for the digital transformation towards sustainability, they are not yet contributing to the sustainable development of the ICT sector.
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