In 2022, one of our master students started her master thesis project on designing a low-energy/low-emission website for the Sustainability Lab, which is part of the uio.no domain. UiO's web pages are built with Vortex, a CMS-based publishing platform. In a meeting with USIT, UiO's IT department, we found out that UiO has now about 1,000,000 web pages and this number is increasing every year.
USIT has no idea how much energy is needed to run all these web pages and how much greenhouse gas emissions are generated. At the same time, UiO has a Climate and Environmental Strategy that has clear goals: UiO shall reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% by 2030. Achieving a 50% reduction by 2030 will involve an average yearly reduction of 7%. In order to reach this and other goals, UiO has started a yearly Greenhouse Gas Account (in Norwegian).
The Greenhouse Gas Account does not provide any data on the contribution of 1,000,000 web pages to UiO's energy use and emissions. This master thesis project proposes to fill this gap, by asking some of the following questions:
1. Why does UiO have 1,000,000 web pages?
2. What are the energy use and greenhouse gas emissions of these web pages (hosting; page views)?
3. What part of UiO's web ecosystem uses the most energy?
4. What are the climate gains of limiting the number of web pages?
5. How can website design contribute to reduced energy use and greenhouse gas emissions?
6. Can a web-based tool help UiO staff to calculate the greenhouse gas emissions of their web page or website?
In terms of research approaches that can be applied to this thesis, we propose design for sustainability, systemic design, and systems thinking.
Supervision
We regard the social aspect of doing a master's thesis as important as the academic aspect. As supervisors, we will offer you an engaged and inspiring environment in the Sustainability Lab as well as access to experts when needed.
Recommended courses:
- IN5010 Design, Technology & Society
- IN5470 Design for Sustainability (new course code in 2024)
Inspiring literature and websites:
https://sustainablewebdesign.org/
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think
https://en.reset.org/whats-carbon-footprint-your-website/
