Reducing the climate impact of data portals: a case study

TL;DR

This paper discusses strategies to reduce the energy consumption of data portals, specifically the MaRDI Portal, aiming to lower the ICT sector's environmental impact and promote sustainable knowledge base development.

Contribution

It proposes techniques to decrease the energy footprint of MediaWiki-based knowledge bases, with plans for implementation and measurement of energy efficiency improvements.

Findings

Proposed energy reduction techniques for knowledge bases

Plans for concrete energy efficiency measurements

Guidelines for developers to reduce environmental impact

Abstract

The carbon footprint share of the information and communication technology (ICT) sector has steadily increased in the past decade and is predicted to make up as much as 23 \% of global emissions in 2030. This shows a pressing need for developers, including the information retrieval community, to make their code more energy-efficient. In this project proposal, we discuss techniques to reduce the energy footprint of the MaRDI (Mathematical Research Data Initiative) Portal, a MediaWiki-based knowledge base. In future work, we plan to implement these changes and provide concrete measurements on the gain in energy efficiency. Researchers developing similar knowledge bases can adapt our measures to reduce their environmental footprint. In this way, we are working on mitigating the climate impact of Information Retrieval research.