Partners

Inter-disciplinary nature

Inter-disciplinary nature

Partners

The objectives of the GREENDC project require an inter-disciplinary approach for studying and addressing the various issues, including data centre temperature engineering, energy demand forecasting, load-balancing, simulation, ICT tool development, and operations management.

This requires partners from diverse backgrounds to work together for addressing these issues.

The GREENDC consortium consists of partners that have strong expertise on these areas:

Brunel University London (UBRUN)

Brunel University London (UBRUN)

UBRUN will use its expertise in sustainable operations management at Brunel Business School to develop an IDC simulation model and evaluating strategies for sustainable IDC operations for the managers.

Gebze Technical University (GTU)

Gebze Technical University (GTU)

GTU will use its electrical engineering background to develop a model that affects electricity consumption in IDCs.

Turksat (TSAT)

Gebze Technical University (GTU)

TSAT is operating a national scale IDC to provide electronic government services to more than 25 million users in Turkey.

DAVID Holding Company (DAVID)

Gebze Technical University (GTU)

DAVID is also operating a large scale ICT infrastructure including a large number of servers for their software services to public and private clients in Bulgaria.

LKKE

LKKE

LKKE is an innovative SME that specialises in component based ICT solution development, which is essential for the design of the GREENDC architecture.

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The objective of GREENDC relate to the development, testing and deployment of energy efficiency management solutions along with awareness raising, training and knowledge transfer initiatives.

The Partners’ declare that the research targets of GREENDC are strictly compliant with Article 6 (2§) of Directive 1982/2006/EC and that the principles of the European Convention of Human Rights, the rules of the Convention of the Council of Europe for the protection of individuals with regard to automatic processing of personal data and especially the European Directive 95/46/EC, for the protection of personal data will be strictly followed.

Furthermore, GREENDC does not include any research involving the use of human embryonic tissue, human foetuses, human foetal tissue, other human tissues, genetic information, people unable to give consent, pregnant women, nor animals.

GREENDC research objectives do not include study of vulnerable populations, dual use, etc. and are totally uncorrelated with medical or biological activities. GREENDC will not investigate or track users’ activities or beliefs.

GREENDC research methodology does not include clinical trials, involvement of children (and related consent procedures), user-related data collection or similar. Therefore, no privacy issues will be incurred in this respect.

Similarly, GREENDC does not relate to security or military research and therefore we can safely state that these objectives, per se, do not have any ethical implication in the sense of putting at risk or at stake any stakeholders. At the same time, the pervasiveness of a technology which many people do not understand is well known and holds also (if not even more) in the context of a training and knowledge transfer initiative.

At the same time we will be using some of the standard methodologies usually adopted in social research (interviews, workshops, focus groups, questionnaires) and therefore good research practices require respect of certain principles like the adoption of informed consent and confidentiality because informed consent and confidentiality are as important for a sociological study as they are for clinical research.

To this extent it has been considered necessary to adopt typical safeguards relevant for handling social study related methodological tools.

Each University taking part in the project has access to an established Ethics Committee that is recognised nationwide at institutional level and operates not only for the university and but also for other entities in need ethical scrutiny and independent assessment.

The consortium has planned to develop a set of procedures and controls to ensure that all requirements with respect to informed consent are adhered to. Below is a list of requirements deemed central to ensuring informed consent and information sheets meet the strict requirements with respect to the management of personal and medical data.

Participants must have the right:

  • To know that participation is voluntary
  • To ask questions and receive understandable answers before making a decision
  • To know who will benefit from participation
  • To know the procedures that will be implemented for data management
  • To receive assurances that appropriate data protection is in place
  • To know how their data will be collected, protected during the project and either destroyed or reused at the end of the research, if plan to reuse the data exist, information must be provided in order to insure that the involved minors will be re-asked for their consent as soon as their reach legal majority, in compliance with the Article 29 working group WP 147 00483/08/EN Document
  • To withdraw themselves and their data from the project at any time
  • To know of any potential commercial exploitation of the research.

Therefore, in the context of the project the ethical clearance for the activities previously mentioned (interviews, questionnaires, workshops and focus groups) will be addresses by the university in charge following the approach reported hereafter.

  1. A specific request will be sent to the relevant committee briefing the project concept, its implications and requesting authorisation for the planned activity and related adopted modules and procedures.
  2. Upon receipt, the committee will examine the provided documentation and formulate its decision along with recommendations and guidelines that will have to be followed.
  3. Prior to the commencement of the relevant research and where applicable, copies of ethical approvals/notifications/opinions by the competent legal local/national Ethics Boards/Bodies/administrations on the informed consent procedure, will be submitted to the EC/REA.

Overall, compliance with fundamental ethical principles, including privacy and protection of personal data, and the potential impact of the technologies resulting from GREENDC on these ethical principles and societal values, will be assessed.

Research will be undertaken taking account of the national legal frameworks in these countries.

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