The Network for sustainable Digital Research Infrastructure Vision and Expertise (NetDRIVE) is developing a forum for managers, software engineers, academics and others to come together to build a common vision for a sustainable future and to incite a transition to sustainable working practices in the Digital Research Infrastructure communities by 2040 or sooner. The implementation of NetDRIVE started on January 9th 2025.
NetDRIVE brings together creative thinking from across UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to enable change through technological progress, to build a common vision of a sustainable future, and to incite a transition to sustainable working practices in current and future DRI communities, recognising that digital research will become increasingly prevalent as the technical capability expands. The project will provide leadership in the UK and globally, exploiting the strength-in depth of a centuries long tradition of academic institutions driving change for societal benefit.
This meeting will initiate NetDRIVE Stage 2 and will address the following three questions:
- How can we maintain competitive computing capability when we have net zero challenges and a 10-fold increase per decade in the price of a top-end machine?
- How do we manage ethical issues around culture change and resource usage for our national compute resource and associated data?
- How do we develop the new skills needed both for rapidly advancing technology and evolving sustainability targets?
The meeting will be held over Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, with an evening social event.
