Date: 03/10/2022

Relevance: GS-3: Conservation, Environmental Pollution, and Degradation, Environmental Impact Assessment.

Key Phrases: Dark data, digital carbon footprint, digital decarbonization, Optimising networks, and data transmission, Illuminate dark data, Making data processing and storage more sustainable, Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things.

Why in News?

• More than half of the digital data firms generate is collected, processed, and stored for single-use purposes. This “dark data” is anchored to the real world by the energy it requires.
• Even data that is stored and never used again takes up space on servers – typically huge banks of computers in warehouses. Those computers and those warehouses all use lots of electricity. This is a significant energy cost that is hidden in most organizations.

A digital carbon footprint:

• Digitization is not itself an environmental issue, but there are huge environmental impacts that depend on how people use digital processes in daily work activities.
• While most climate change activists are focused on limiting emissions from the automotive, aviation, and energy industries, the processing of digital data is already comparable to these sectors and is still growing.
• In 2020, digitization was purported to generate 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
• Production of digital data is increasing fast – this year the world is expected to generate 97 zettabytes (that is: 97 trillion gigabytes) of data. By 2025, it could almost double to 181 zettabytes.
• To illustrate the magnitude of the dark data situation, data centres (responsible for 2.5% of all human-induced carbon dioxide) have a greater carbon footprint than the aviation industry (2.1%).
• A typical data-driven business such as insurance, retail, or banking, with 100 employees, might generate 2,983 gigabytes of dark data a day.
• If they were to keep that data for a year, that data would have a similar carbon footprint to flying six times from London to New York.
• Currently, companies produce 1,300,000,000 gigabytes of dark data a day – that’s 3,023,255 flights from London to New York.

Reducing the carbon footprint of digital data:

• Identify all data stores and gain an overview:
  • Gaining visibility through data mapping and data discovery is a critical first step.
• Illuminate dark data:
  • Proactive data management can help companies to understand the risks associated with data and decide which data can be deleted.
• Automate the discovery and data insight routines:
  • Automating analytics, tracking, and reporting for determining organizational accountability for dark data, file use and security can help companies facing increasing data volumes.
• Minimize and place controls around data:
  • Better data classification, flexible retention, and compliant policy engines can allow confident deletion of non-relevant information.
• Monitor to ensure continual adherence to compliance standards:
  • Evaluate the organization’s ability to monitor breach activity and trigger reporting procedures to ensure compliance.
• Use of the latest technologies:
  • Technologies such as the Internet of Things, machine learning, and Artificial intelligence can be used for better targeting of the data and reducing the load of dark data.
• Optimising networks and data transmission:
  • Improving the carbon efficiency of networks will mean retiring older technologies such as copper, 3G, and 4G, and replacing them with newer ones such as fibre and 5G networks.
  • Data workloads become more efficient when shifted to these new technologies, which also helps realize sustainability at scale as IoT-connected sensors and devices improve the efficiency of farming, supply chains, and energy grids.

Conclusion:

• There is a carbon footprint to every bit stored. Organizations need to start using a green lens to assess data hygiene practices to ensure climate change will not get side-lined.
• It is a reality that the costs of doing business are rising due to climate change, and given the exponential growth in data predicted over the next decade, making data processing and storage more sustainable at every step is now a vital consideration.
• The benefits to business are also real - increased resilience, lower costs, higher efficiency, and a brighter future for all stakeholders.

Source: The Hindu

Mains Question:

Q. What is "Dark Data" and what is its role in increasing the digital carbon footprint? Suggest some measures to reduce the digital carbon footprint.