DOCSEARCHbyAlgolia
Submit Docs

The Digital Humanities Climate Coalition Toolkit

website·Indexed 29 days ago

https://sas-dhrh.github.io/dhcc-toolkit

A comprehensive guide for sustainable digital humanities practices. It provides resources on minimal and maximal computing, sustainable working practices, grant writing, and institutional advocacy. The toolkit includes decision trees for research workflows, climate change FAQs, and case studies on reducing the environmental footprint of ICT, AI, and big data.

Tokens
22K
Snippets
23
Records
145
Agent score
73%

What's inside DHCC Toolkit

  1. Overview of the Digital Humanities Climate Coalition Toolkit

    The DHCC Toolkit is a community-developed guide designed to help researchers, educators, students, administrators, librarians, and technicians make their digital research practices more environmentally responsible. It covers actionable solutions for digital practices, travel, and advocacy, framed within the context of climate justice.

  2. Overview of the DHCC Toolkit for sustainable digital practices

    The DHCC Toolkit provides a framework for reducing the carbon footprint of digital academic work. It is designed for anyone who creates websites, uses videoconferencing, visualizes data, or manages digital research projects across the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The toolkit is divided into several key areas of focus:

    • Minimal Computing: Strategies to reduce the carbon footprint of digital practices.
    • Maximal Computing: Analysis of computationally intensive tools (e.g., Machine Learning) and when their use is justifiable.
    • Grant Writing: Recommendations for designing sustainable research projects and Data Management Plans.
    • Working Practices: Guidance on reducing energy consumption in daily work, including communication, travel, and data preservation.
    • Institutional Advocacy: Tips for implementing sustainability beyond the individual or project level.
    • Decision Trees & Teaching: Guides for making technical choices and implementing climate-oriented teaching (works-in-progress).
    • Climate Change Primer: Basic foundational knowledge on climate change.

  3. Overview of Minimal Computing principles

    Minimal computing (minicomp) is a set of practices aimed at reducing the environmental impact of digital technologies and lowering barriers to access. It involves reducing reliance on substantial storage, processing power, middleware, databases, and complex hardware. The goal is to create efficient, frugal, and accessible digital projects that ensure long-term sustainability by avoiding unnecessary 'techno-utopian' features.

  4. Overview of the Digital Humanities Climate Coalition (DHCC) Toolkit

    The DHCC Toolkit is a community-developed guide designed to help researchers, educators, students, administrators, librarians, and technicians make their digital research practices more environmentally responsible. It focuses on actionable solutions and critical reflection within the context of climate justice, covering digital practices as well as general areas like travel and advocacy.

  5. Choose between static, dynamic, and hybrid website architectures

    Selecting the right architecture impacts the carbon footprint and performance of a project.

    • Static Sites: Consist of a directory of files on a server. Users access files directly without database requests. Ideal for blogs, portfolios, documentation, and CVs. They are generally more sustainable and cheaper to host.
    • Dynamic Sites: Use server-side programming to pull data from a database/CMS. Ideal for complex projects requiring interactive features, APIs, search engines, or heavy user interaction.
    • Hybrid Sites: Combine both static and dynamic elements to balance functionality with reduced carbon impact.

  6. Implement minimal computing through sustainable web architecture

    Minimal computing involves designing digital systems that operate under significant hardware, software, network, or power constraints. Practical implementation strategies include:

    • Using Static Site Generators (SSGs): Reducing server-side processing by serving pre-rendered static files (e.g., using Gatsby or Jekyll).
    • Hybrid Architectures: Minimizing dependencies by hosting the majority of a site as static content (via GitHub/Netlify) while isolating complex dynamic functionality into separate, bespoke tools (e.g., Heroku apps).
    • Energy-Aware Hosting: Utilizing solar-powered servers or routing traffic based on sunlight availability to reduce carbon footprints.
    • Carbon-Neutral Design: Reducing energy consumption by optimizing assets and simplifying the technical environment to lower the overall carbon cost of the website.

  7. Optimize AI model architecture for lower carbon intensity

    To reduce the energy and carbon footprint of AI models, consider the following technical strategies:

    • Architecture Choice: Use sequence-to-sequence models instead of decoder-only models for similar tasks, as they tend to be less energy-intensive.
    • Hyperparameter Tuning: Replace brute-force grid search with more efficient alternatives like random or Bayesian hyperparameter search techniques.
    • Deep Learning Optimization: Implement compact networks, energy-efficient training strategies, energy-efficient inference approaches, and energy-efficient data usage.

  8. Analyze the Cloud as a physical factory

    To critically evaluate the impact of cloud computing, frame the 'Cloud' as a physical factory. This lens helps identify hidden costs and dependencies:

    1. Physical Place: Acknowledge the actual geographic location of the infrastructure.
    2. Resource Consumption: Account for the consumption of water, electricity, and the need for physical infrastructure (roads, sewers).
    3. Interdependency: Recognize how cloud infrastructure relies on other critical systems.
    4. Hardware Supply Chain: Consider the environmental and political consequences of extracting materials like lithium, tin, cobalt, and rare earths.
    5. Local Impact: Evaluate whether the data center provides compensatory benefits (jobs, tax income) to the local community.
    6. Industry Shift: Consider how the Cloud enables automation or changes in work for other industries (e.g., autonomous vehicles).

  9. Understand the mechanisms of climate change

    Climate change is driven by the release of carbon and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, primarily from burning fossil fuels (oil, gas, and coal). While some emissions are absorbed by natural sinks like trees, others remain in the atmosphere, trapping solar energy and increasing average planetary temperatures (global warming/heating). This process leads to consequences such as wildfires, droughts, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, and wildlife extinction.

  10. Navigate the DHCC Toolkit for sustainable research

    Users can navigate the toolkit via a decision-tree approach for specific questions ('I Want To...') or follow a suggested pathway covering the following topics:

    • Introduction
    • Minimal Computing
    • Maximal Computing
    • Grant Writing
    • Working Practices
    • Teaching
    • Advocating Within Your Institution
    • Case Studies
    • Climate Change FAQs

  11. Choose between static and dynamic websites for sustainability

    When deciding on a website architecture, consider the resource trade-offs:

    • Static Websites: Have fixed content that is the same for every user until manually updated. They are generally more sustainable as they require fewer server-side resources and no real-time database queries.
    • Dynamic Websites: Generated 'on the fly' to support interactivity and user-generated content (e.g., social media). These require more processing power and energy per request.

  12. Strategize small-scale sustainable changes for institutional advocacy

    When advocating for smaller changes within an institution, focus on 'easy wins' that shift general attitudes and raise awareness. Small changes should be used to prefigure larger systemic shifts and address feelings of powerlessness. Avoid small changes that require disproportionate effort or encourage the policing of behaviors.