Introduction to the Case Studies

Overview

Questions

• How these sources of carbon emissions map to specific research roles?
• What can they do to mitigate their carbon footprint, in concrete terms?

Objectives

• Introduce the different case studies and the expectations for the collaborative activity.

Introduction

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The next episodes introduce 4 case studies of personas worried about the carbon emissions of their digital research. In all cases, they want to identify what those emissions are, quantify them and consider what steps they can take in order to minimise them.

• Case Study 1 - Research Software Engineer: Celia, a Research Software Engineer, has developed and released a Python package, which has been widely adopted within her research community. She would like to assess the environmental impact of the software development process and its usage.
• Case Study 2 - Lab Scientist doing computational work: Emma, a researcher in a biology lab is tasked with analysing genomic sequencing data. She is interested in reducing the digital carbon footprint of her computational workflow and balance scientific rigour with environmental responsibility.
• Case Study 3 - HPC User: Hugh, a computational chemist, works on high fidelity simulations of the dynamic behaviour of atomistic systems using a number of High Performance Computing facilities. He wants to understand the emissions associated with his works and take measures to minimise them.
• Case Study 4 - GPU Computing User: Miguel is an MLOps engineer embedded in an applied computational neuroscience department, whose applications make heavy use of heterogeneous compute hardware such as GPUs and neuromorphic# processors. He is mindful that his domain of work is often disproportionately carbon-intensive and wants to take steps to minimise the emissions.

The activity

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In groups, pick a case study and work through the different challenges it contains. You might pick a case study that, as a group, feel closer to your own interests or daily role, or you might choose something completely different to help you learn about a different topic.

The case studies contain several challenges that will require for you to reflect on the digital activities that are being carried in that specific role and calculate their impact, or envisage ways of reducing it. The resources that are required to solve these challenges have been discussed in the previous episodes, or are mentioned specifically in the case studies.

Reporting back

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Nominate someone from your group to provide a brief overview to the class of what you all discovered. This could include topics like:

• What were the main contributors to emissions from your scenario?
• What were the key steps taken to reduce emissions?
• Any other aspects of the respective research scenario that you think would be carbon intensive?