Page 34 - Sustainability Strategiy 2023 - 2030 | TU Dresden

Digitalization

With its all-encompassing transformative power, digitalization can have both positive and negative
effects on sustainable development. It is therefore particularly important to ensure that the
positive impact of digitalization on cross-sectoral sustainable development is not offset by its
negative effects. As a cross-sectional issue, digitalization must be evaluated in all contexts of
sustainability. Digital infrastructure has a significant impact on resource and energy consumption.
This is associated with negative climate impacts and loss of biodiversity. Due to rebound effects,
gains in efficiency are not enough to minimize the negative impact. In descending order of priority,
hardware, software, usage, and economic sufficiency must be set against this problem.

Sustainable development at TU Dresden is already being promoted in the processes of digitalization.
With the extension of the University Executive Board to include the Chief Officer for Digitalization
and Information Management, the IT Coordination Team, the Data Protection Officer, and the
Center for Interdisciplinary Digital Sciences (CIDS), TU Dresden is broadly positioned strategically,
operationally, and innovatively in the area of digitalization. Both centralized and decentralized
information technologies play an important role when considering digitalization and sustainability.
Using the central infrastructure provided by the Center for Information Services and High
Performance Computing (ZIH), computing processes can be carried out in a particularly energy-
efficient manner and reliability can be guaranteed. The waste heat from servers is fed into the
district-heating network of the City of Dresden. At the same time, TU Dresden therefore faces the
challenges of rebound effects, which make sufficiency considerations necessary. Decentralized
information technologies are regulated by the procurement guidelines and IT regulations. In order
to quantify and control sustainability criteria, statistics on decentralized IT procurement and use are
just as necessary as determining the sustainable implementation of IT application scenarios.

TU Dresden has set itself the goal of carrying out the digital transformation responsibly and
taking the SDGs into account. At the same time, it is using digitalization to promote its own
sustainable development.

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