Research and Education Towards Smart and Sustainable World

TL;DR

This paper outlines a comprehensive vision for integrating research and education in ICT to develop intelligent, sustainable systems that enhance societal and environmental well-being through interdisciplinary, holistic approaches.

Contribution

It introduces a new holistic research paradigm emphasizing AI, feedback, and interdisciplinary methods for sustainable ICT development and education planning.

Findings

Proposes a step-wise planning approach for research and education.

Highlights the importance of feedback loops and human acceptance.

Suggests concrete actions for implementation.

Abstract

We propose a vision for directing research and education in the ICT field. Our Smart and Sustainable World vision targets at prosperity for the people and the planet through better awareness and control of both human-made and natural environment. The needs of the society, individuals, and industries are fulfilled with intelligent systems that sense their environment, make proactive decisions on actions advancing their goals, and perform the actions on the environment. We emphasize artificial intelligence, feedback loops, human acceptance and control, intelligent use of basic resources, performance parameters, mission-oriented interdisciplinary research, and a holistic systems view complementing the conventional analytical reductive view as a research paradigm especially for complex problems. To serve a broad audience, we explain these concepts and list the essential literature. We suggest planning research and education by specifying, in a step-wise manner, scenarios, performance criteria, system models, research problems and education content, resulting in common goals and a coherent project portfolio as well as education curricula. Research and education produce feedback to support evolutionary development and encourage creativity in research. Finally, we propose concrete actions for realizing this approach.