Introduction to Digital Sustainability

In this first chapter, a holistic overview of the topic sustainability is given, with a specific focus on sustainability in the context of Digital Systems. A summary of related policy initiatives is given, including the European Green Deal, legislation initiatives and others. Furthermore, a specific focus is placed on how to assess the level of sustainability; we will summarize quantitative metrics which are applied in the field but also recognize that a quantitative assessment is not possible in all cases and thus we rather use the concept of so-called Key Value Indicators, representing a more “intuitive” representation. The overall objective is to present a 360° overview on the state of the art related to sustainability, preparing the deep-dives following in the subsequent chapters.