This is a knowledge hub for the Computing within Limits research field, created as a part of a research project at the research institution SINTEF.
The default view of most computing work is based on the idea that unlimited economic growth is achievable and desirable. Computing within Limits field seeks to explore ways where computing may support long-term well-being within global ecological and material limits. It argues that “sustainability” must be grounded in rigorous metrics arising from those limits, and that the complexity of societal systems might be reduced, easing resource use and waste production. Three main principles to computing research have been proposed 1:
- Question growth
- Consider models of scarcity
- Reduce energy and material consumption
LIMITS is a workshop specifically dedicated to this topic, and is concerned with:
[...] the role of computing in human societies situated in a world of planetary boundaries and limits, such as limits of extractive logics, limits to a biosphere’s ability to recover, limits to our knowledge, or limits of technological solutions to societal issues.
We have made a small literature review called Overview over the first decade of LIMITS, accepted at the 2026 LIMITS workshop. The paper can serve as a nice introduction towhat type of research has been conducted within the scope of the workshop during its first decade.
In this section we provide an overview of essential research papers for understanding Computing within Limits:
- Nardi et al. (2018). Computing Within Limits. Communications of the ACM, 61(10), 86–93.
- De Valk (2021). A pluriverse of local worlds: a review of Computing within Limits related terminology and practices. LIMITS workshop.
Computing within Limits shares parts of its motivation and goals with other research fields:
- Green IT (Information Technology): how to design, develop and use IT in an environmentally friendly way. Green IT contains an assumption that we can “engineer around” the finiteness of the Earth’s resources and waste capacity 1
- Collapse informatics: the study, design, and development of sociotechnical systems in the abundant present for use in a future of scarcity.
- Crisis informatics: concerned with technology-based studies of disaster planning and response
- ICTD: (Information and Communication Technology for Development) explored the potential of computing for improving the socioeconomic situation of the poor.
- Sustainable Interaction Design: identify how interaction designs lead to material effects
In this section we collect forms of computing that are related to and relevant for Computing within Limits, with links to useful resources.
- Permacomputing: Regenerative and resilient computing, inspired by permaculture.
- Frugal computing: Achieving our aims with less energy and material spent.
- Frugal computing (limited.systems)
- Vanderbauwhede (2023). Frugal Computing -- On the need for low-carbon and sustainable computing and the path towards zero-carbon computing. IAB workshop on Environmental Impact of Internet Applications and Systems.
- Computing within limits
- Low Carbon Computing workshop
- ICT for sustainability (ICT4S)
- Sustainable AI conference
- ACM Journal on Responsible Computing
- ACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies
A useful countdown for "Responsible Computing and Sustainable ICT" submission deadlines can be found at https://responsible-computing.github.io.
- Joseph Tainter (1988): The collapse of complex societies
The main contributors of this repository are researchers at SINTEF:
- Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) group: Maria Emine Nylund and Ophelia Prillard
- Trustworthy Green IoT Software group: Erik Johannes Husom
Contributions are welcome! Send an e-mail to either Maria or Erik Johannes, or, if you are familiar with git/GitHub, you can make a pull request in the GitHub repo.