Shaping the Digital Future of ErUM Research: Sustainability & Ethics

TL;DR

This workshop report reviews progress and strategies in making ErUM research more sustainable and ethically responsible through technical, educational, and community-driven initiatives, emphasizing AI's transformative role and accountability.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent sustainability measures, ethical considerations, and proposed actions to embed responsible practices in ErUM research.

Findings

Implementation of CO2 reduction strategies in data workflows

Emphasis on AI ethics and transparency in research

Need for education and community engagement in sustainability

Abstract

This workshop report from "Shaping the Digital Future of ErUM Research: Sustainability & Ethics" (Aachen, 2025) reviews progress on sustainability measures in data-intensive ErUM-Data research since the 2023 call-to-action on resource-aware research. It evaluates short-, medium-, and long-term actions around monitoring and reducing CO2 emissions, improving data and software FAIRness, optimizing workflows and computing infrastructures, and aligning operations with low-carbon energy availability, including concepts such as "breathing" computing centers, long-term data storage strategies, and software efficiency certification. The report stresses the need for systematic teaching, training, mentoring, and new support formats to establish sustainable coding and computing practices, particularly among students and early-career researchers, and highlights the importance of dedicated steering and funding instruments to embed sustainability in project planning. Ethical discussions focus on the transformative use of AI in ErUM-Data, addressing autonomy, bias, transparency, explainability, attribution of responsibility, and the risk of deskilling, while reaffirming that accountability for scientific outcomes remains with human researchers. Finally, the report emphasizes that sustainable transformation requires not only technical measures but also targeted awareness-building, communication strategies, incentives, and community-driven initiatives to move from awareness to action and to integrate sustainability and ethics into everyday scientific practice.