The Optimizing WEB
Aditya Ghose, Graham Billiau · IGI Global eBooks · 2011
There is a global consensus on the need to reduce our collective carbon footprint. Improving the efficiency of how we use our infrastructure is central to reducing energy consumption. Optimization is fundamental to any approach to climate change mitigation. While optimization technology has been on offer for almost 70 years, most applications of optimization technology have been in piecemeal, monolithic optimization systems. Yet the climate change crisis requires optimization on a large-scale, and in manner that permits entities in a massive planetary supply chain to collaborate to achieve the commonly agreed upon carbon mitigation objective. Traditional stand-alone “batch” optimization will also not be adequate for this setting, but will need to be tightly coupled with networks of planners and controllers. This chapter presents a vision for the Optimizing Web – a large global network of interoperating optimizers that is as ubiquitous as the present-day web, and that leverages it‘s existing infrastructure for green ICT.