research-article

Toward Alternative Decentralized Infrastructures

Authors:

Bill Tomlinson,

Donald J. Patterson,

Debra Richardson,

Jean-Daniel Saphores,

Dan StokolsAuthors Info & Claims

DEV '15: Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computing for Development

Pages 33 - 40

https://doi.org/10.1145/2830629.2830648

Published: 01 December 2015 Publication History

Abstract

New forms of infrastructure are needed in a world characterized by the burdens of global climate change, a growing population, increasing socio-technical complexity, and natural and human stressors to our human systems. Enabling communities to transition to a more resilient configuration of infrastructures is crucial for establishing a distributed portfolio of processes and systems by which human needs may be met. This paper proposes a potential way to increase infrastructure resilience by supporting the creation of alternative, decentralized infrastructures (ADIs) composed of small-scale, heterogeneous systems and processes. We see two possible roles for these ADIs: first, they could be integrated with existing infrastructures in the industrialized world, thereby providing some redundancy during times of strain on larger centralized systems; and second, they could help developing communities leapfrog centralized and more capital intensive conventional infrastructure. We present a model for how ADI systems may be built, based on principles from software engineering. Finally, we identify some challenges that go beyond technical implementation details in the instantiation of ADIs, and offer some thoughts on how to address them.

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Cited By

Helmrich AMarkolf SLi RCarvalhaes TKim YBondank ENatarajan MAhmad NChester M(2021)Centralization and decentralization for resilient infrastructure and complexityEnvironmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability10.1088/2634-4505/ac0a4f1:2(021001)Online publication date: 16-Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1088/2634-4505/ac0a4f
Norton JPenzenstadler BTomlinson B(2019)Implications of Grassroots Sustainable Agriculture Community Values on the Design of Information SystemsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/33591363:CSCW(1-22)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3359136
Motloch J(2019)Co-design Methods and Sustainable DevelopmentEncyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education10.1007/978-3-030-11352-0_311(232-242)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11352-0_311
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Toward Alternative Decentralized Infrastructures
1. Applied computing
  1. Computers in other domains
2. Human-centered computing

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

DEV '15: Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computing for Development

December 2015

186 pages

ISBN:9781450334907

DOI:10.1145/2830629

General Chairs:
Arjuna Sathiaseelan
University of Cambridge
,
Marco Zennaro
International Centre for Theoretical Physics
,
Program Chairs:
Elizabeth Belding
University of California, Santa Barbara
,
Jay Chen
NYU Abu Dhabi

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 01 December 2015

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ACM DEV '15: Annual Symposium on Computing for Development

December 1 - 2, 2015

London, United Kingdom

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DEV '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 13 of 50 submissions, 26%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 52 of 164 submissions, 32%

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Cited By

Helmrich AMarkolf SLi RCarvalhaes TKim YBondank ENatarajan MAhmad NChester M(2021)Centralization and decentralization for resilient infrastructure and complexityEnvironmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability10.1088/2634-4505/ac0a4f1:2(021001)Online publication date: 16-Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1088/2634-4505/ac0a4f
Norton JPenzenstadler BTomlinson B(2019)Implications of Grassroots Sustainable Agriculture Community Values on the Design of Information SystemsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/33591363:CSCW(1-22)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3359136
Motloch J(2019)Co-design Methods and Sustainable DevelopmentEncyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education10.1007/978-3-030-11352-0_311(232-242)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11352-0_311
Stokols D(2018)The Changing Morphology of Indoor Ecosystems in the Twenty-first Century Driven by Technological, Climatic, and Sociodemographic ForcesHuman Ecology Review10.22459/HER.24.02.2018.0224:2(25-40)Online publication date: Dec-2018
https://doi.org/10.22459/HER.24.02.2018.02
Nardi BTomlinson BPatterson DChen JPargman DRaghavan BPenzenstadler B(2018)Computing within limitsCommunications of the ACM10.1145/318358261:10(86-93)Online publication date: 26-Sep-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3183582
Knowles BBates OHåkansson MMandryk RHancock MPerry MCox A(2018)This Changes Sustainable HCIProceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3173574.3174045(1-12)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3173574.3174045
Markolf SChester MEisenberg DIwaniec DDavidson CZimmerman RMiller TRuddell BChang H(2018)Interdependent Infrastructure as Linked Social, Ecological, and Technological Systems (SETSs) to Address Lock‐in and Enhance ResilienceEarth's Future10.1029/2018EF0009266:12(1638-1659)Online publication date: 10-Dec-2018
https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EF000926
Motloch J(2018)Co-design Methods and Sustainable DevelopmentEncyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education10.1007/978-3-319-63951-2_311-1(1-11)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63951-2_311-1
Blevis EPreist CSchien DHo PNardi BTomlinson B(2017)Further Connecting Sustainable Interaction Design with Sustainable Digital Infrastructure DesignProceedings of the 2017 Workshop on Computing Within Limits10.1145/3080556.3080568(71-83)Online publication date: 22-Jun-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3080556.3080568
Qadir JSathiaseelan AWang LCrowcroft JNardi BRaghavan BPargman D(2016)Taming limits with approximate networkingProceedings of the Second Workshop on Computing within Limits10.1145/2926676.2926678(1-8)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2926676.2926678

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