Shaping the Digital Future of ErUM Research: Sustainability & Ethics
Abstract
This workshop report from "Shaping the Digital Future of ErUM Research: Sustainability & Ethics" (Aachen, 2025) reviews progress on sustainability measures in data-intensive ErUM-Data research since the 2023 call-to-action on resource-aware research. It evaluates short-, medium-, and long-term actions around monitoring and reducing CO2 emissions, improving data and software FAIRness, optimizing workflows and computing infrastructures, and aligning operations with low-carbon energy availability, including concepts such as "breathing" computing centers, long-term data storage strategies, and software efficiency certification. The report stresses the need for systematic teaching, training, mentoring, and new support formats to establish sustainable coding and computing practices, particularly among students and early-career researchers, and highlights the importance of dedicated steering and funding instruments to embed sustainability in project planning. Ethical discussions focus on the transformative use of AI in ErUM-Data, addressing autonomy, bias, transparency, explainability, attribution of responsibility, and the risk of deskilling, while reaffirming that accountability for scientific outcomes remains with human researchers. Finally, the report emphasizes that sustainable transformation requires not only technical measures but also targeted awareness-building, communication strategies, incentives, and community-driven initiatives to move from awareness to action and to integrate sustainability and ethics into everyday scientific practice.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.24087,
title = {Shaping the Digital Future of ErUM Research: Sustainability & Ethics},
author = {Luca Di Bella and Jan Bürger and Markus Demleitner and Torsten Enßlin and Johannes Erdmann and Martin Erdmann and Benjamin Fischer and Martin Gasthuber and Gabriele Gramelsberger and Wolfgang Gründinger and Prateek Gupta and Johannes Hartl and Maximilian Horzela and Vijay Kartik and Stefan Krischer and Eva Kröll and Thomas Kuhr and Katharina Kürschner and Inga Lakomiec and Valerie Lang and Kristin Lohwasser and Thomas Metcalf and Martin Möller and Saskia Nagel and Susanne Pfalzner and Rebecca Redlin and Christopher Schrader and Kathrin Schulz and Markus Schumacher and Kilian Schwarz and Fabian Sigler and Dwayne Spiteri and Achim Stahl and Judith Steinfeld and Wim Vanderbauwhede and Cyrus Walther and Angela Warkentin and Peter Wissmann and Eoin Woods},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.24087},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
32 pages, no figures, report for workshop "Shaping the Digital Future of ErUM Research: Sustainability & Ethics", 28 July to 1 August 2025, Aachen, Germany, see https://indico.desy.de/event/47133/