| Requirements engineers who try to design sustainable systems may have to compromise when it comes to different environmental impacts. For example, compact fluorescent lamps contain mercury, a dangerous material. But these lamps also save energy. They reduce consumption at the expense of introducing toxic substances into the environment. To deal with these trade-offs, researchers have developed weighting metrics to account for every type of impact in a single assessment. However, the weights have the potential to direct the system design toward neglecting lowly weighted environmental concerns.;This study aims to clarify the effects of different weighting configurations. The project employs a mixing triangle that weights three different areas of environmental impact against each other. It then compares the effects of an application service provider to the effects of a system that uses locally hosted software. The comparison uses multiple weighting configurations. |
