Page 34 - TU Dresden Sustainability Strategy 2023-2030

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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