About Paris-DE

PARIS-DE (Design Principles and Responsible Innovation for a Sustainable Digital Economy) is a research project that brings together researchers from Lancaster University, University of Oxford, King’s College London, University of Sussex and Mike Berners-Lee’s Small World Consulting to investigate and co-design a framework for sustainable and responsible innovation in Digital Technology. Collaborating in the project are also a range of partners across industry and civil society, including the BBC, BT, Horizon, IBM and HMG Sustainable Technology Advice & Reporting (STAR) Team in Defra.

PARIS-DE is one of ten projects funded as part of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s (EPSRC)  Sustainable Digital Society call. The project started in September 2021 and will be running until August 2024.

PARIS-DE will use virtual labs to provide information and tools for those creating digital technologies to understand, plan and act on their carbon footprint – ultimately aiding the digital sector to align with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5^oC global temperature increase.

This is a multidisciplinary research project across computer science, human-centred design, philosophy and ethics and environmental economics. We will work with three case studies focusing on video streaming, artificial intelligence and autonomous systems to co-design a sustainable and responsible innovation framework for digital technology. The case studies will provide the basis for developing this framework, building on an evidence base of digital technology’s carbon emissions and deeply considering the multiple, complex and often conflicting narratives that explain carbon emissions. The framework will have responsible innovation at its core to ensure carbon emissions are investigated alongside wider environmental, societal and ethical issues.