Expert papers, studies and research documents
Find information on all questions of economy and society that are reflected in the sustainability goals. Make your articles, studies, podcasts or videos available beyond the mainstream.
21 professional article found
How to save energy, emissions and money in the building sector
The TAB report on energy-saving effects in the building sector shows what property owners can do to save resources and money and how the state can help them. Policy brief TAB-Fokus is available in English.Buildings account for around 35 % of Germany's total final energy consumption. Residential buildings account for the largest share of buildings' energy consumption for heating, hot water, ...
AlgorithmWatch forced to shut down Instagram monitoring project after threats from Facebook
Digital platforms play an ever-increasing role in structuring and influencing public debate. Civil society watchdogs, researchers and journalists need to be able to hold them to account. But Facebook is increasingly fighting those who try. It shut down New York University’s Ad Observatory last week, and went after AlgorithmWatch, too. The European Parliament and EU Member States must act now to ...
A Call for EU Cyber Diplomacy.
In December 2020, the European Union (EU) presented its new strategy on cybersecurity with the aim of strengthening Europe’s technological and digital sovereignty. The document lists reform projects that will link cybersecurity more closely with the EU’s new rules on data, algorithms, markets, and Internet services. However, it clearly falls short of the development of a European cyber ...
When scholars sprint, bad algorithms are on the run
The first research sprint of the Ethics of Digitalisation project financed by the Stiftung Mercator reached the finishing line. Thirteen international fellows tackled pressing issues concerning the use of AI in content moderation. Looking back at ten intense weeks of interdisciplinary research, we share highlights and key outcomes.In response to increasing public pressure to tackle hate speech and ...
Video streaming: data transmission technology crucial for climate footprint
HD-quality video streaming produces different levels of greenhouse gas emissions depending on the transmission technology. The CO2 emissions generated by data processing in a data centre are relatively low, at 1.5 grams of CO2 per hour. However, the technology used to transmit data from the data centre to the user determines the climate compatibility of cloud services like video streaming. ...
An Economic Case for the UN Climate Targets: Early and strong climate action pays off
Climate action is not cheap – but climate damages aren’t, either. So what level of climate action is best, economically speaking? This question has puzzled economists for decades, and in particular, since the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics went to William Nordhaus, who found 3.5 degrees of warming by 2100 might be an economically desirable outcome. An international team of scientists led by the ...
Less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint
Our World in Data presents the empirical evidence on global development in entries dedicated to specific topics.This blog post draws on data and research discussed in our entries on Environmental impacts of food production and CO2 and Greenhouse Gas Emissions.What is the best way to reduce the carbon footprint of our diet?I have shown previously that what we choose to eat has the largest impact, ...
Who Governs the Internet?
Based on the guiding principle „digital policy means social policy“, this publication follows the idea that internet governance affects everyone. An open, free and global Internet is vital for all. Therefore, infrastructures for surveillance and censorship should not be established.This publication gives an overview of actors and areas of action and stresses that collective engagement is ...
The future of health data
A guide to a research-compatible electronic patient fileUnder the title “Zukunft Gesundheitsdaten — Wegweiser zu einer forschungskompatiblen elektronischen Patientenakte” (Future health data — a guide to a research-compatible electronic patient file), the iRights.Lab developed a comprehensive study on the subject of eHealth on behalf of Bundesdruckerei (federal printing house). It shows ...
“Robot judges” without training?
Discussing the implementation of automated decision making systems as savior of overburdened legal decision makers is en vogue. But if employed instead of human decision makers and with rising complexity of legal decision, they face hardly resolvable structural problems and barriers. Dr. Stephan Dreyer and Johannes Schmees explain this by reference to four technical and legal challenges. By that, ...
Defective computing: How algorithms use speech analysis to profile job candidates
Some companies and scientists present Affective Computing, the algorithmic analysis of personality traits also known as “artificial emotional intelligence”, as an important new development. But the methods that are used are often dubious and present serious risks for discrimination.It was announced with some fanfare that Alexa and others would soon demonstrate breakthroughs in the field of ...
2019 EM2030 SDG Gender Index
In the 2019 Global Report “Harnessing the power of data for gender equality: Introducing the 2019 EM2030 SDG Gender Index”, we introduce the 2019 SDG Gender Index. The index is the most comprehensive tool available to explore the state of gender equality across 129 countries (covering 95% of the world’s girls and women), 14 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and 51 targets ...
Research Monitor Microtargeting
The iRights.Lab think tank produces a regular Research Monitor on behalf of the State Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia.German and European researchers have thus far dealt only tentatively with the topic of microtargeting in election campaigns. Most of the research projects and scientific papers on the subject are from the USA. Since Barack Obama’s election campaign in 2008 at the ...
The Global Gender Gap Report 2018
Gender parity is fundamental to whether and how economies and societies thrive. Ensuring the full development and appropriate deployment of half of the world’s total talent pool has a vast bearing on the growth, competitiveness and future-readiness of economies and businesses worldwide. The Global Gender Gap Report benchmarks 149 countries on their progress towards gender parity across four ...
The Club of Rome Climate Emergency Plan
Climate change is the most pressing global challenge, constituting an existential threat to humanity. The Club of Rome – Climate Emergency Plan sets out 10 priority actions for all sectors and governments, and is an urgent wake up call. The recent IPCC report emphasises that climate-related risks are significantly more dangerous to human life and to the systems that ...
High costs when environmental protection is neglected
Excessive amounts of greenhouse gases, air pollutants and other environmental pollutants harm human health, destroy ecosystems and foster the extinction of animals and plants. Another result: economic losses including loss of production, crop losses or damage to buildings and infrastructure. There are established scientific methods which express this damage in monetary terms. The German ...
keeping an eye on your carbon balance
What is new in the Carbon Calculator?Climate protection is important. And the goal for Germany is clear: From over 11 tonnes of CO2-equivalent to less than 1 tonne of CO2-equivalent per person and year. This is the position of the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) in line with the international community of states. We still have a lot to do in order to achieve this goal. And ultimately we'll only ...
Economic inequality by gender
In this entry we present data and research on economic inequalities between men and women. Here is an overview of some of the points we cover below: - All over the world men tend to earn more than women. - Women are often underrepresented in senior positions within firms, while at the same time they tend to be overrepresented in low-paying jobs. - In many countries men are more likely to own land ...
CO₂ and other Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a gas essential for life—animals exhale it, plants sequester it. It exists in Earth's atmosphere in comparably small concentrations, but is vital for sustaining life. CO2 is also known as a greenhouse gas (GHG)—a gas that absorbs and emits thermal radiation, creating the 'greenhouse effect'. Along with other greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxide and methane, CO2 is ...
Ethics and algorithmic processes for decision making and decision support
Far from being a thing of the future, automated decision-making informed by algorithms (ADM) is already a widespread phenomenon in our contemporary society. It is used in contexts as varied as advanced driver assistance systems, where cars are caused to brake in case of danger, and software packages that decide whether or not a person is eligible for a bank loan. Actions of government are also ...