Exactum rooftop greenhouse experiment grows herbs

A greenhouse has been built on the roof of Exactum in a collaboration by the Department of Computer Science and the Fifth Dimension science project. To begin with, sedum grass is growing on the roof and tomatoes, courgettes and chilli in the greenhouse. The greenhouse is 9.4 square metres large.

The motivation for the computer scientists is the estimation that 2% of the greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans are emitted by equipment using information technology. This is more than e.g. air traffic produces globally. To the scientists, this is reason enough to look into how to decrease the impact of information technology on global warming.

The facilities of the rooftop greenhouse were finished in 2011, and in the spring, the success of different utility plants has been tested. The scientists were driven by the idea that the greenhouse could be maintained with the excess heat from the servers.

Now, crops like tomatoes, rosemary, courgettes and various kinds of chilli are grown in Kumpula. A similar project is carried out in Paul Brenner’s Green Cloud super-computer project at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, USA.

Scientists have been up on the Exactum roof before. Before the greenhouse was installed, they were testing the cold resistance of computers in tents in winter. Some of the same servers are still outside after surviving for three winters. So far, the only problems have been observed with one type of fan. The majority of the computers have been able to survive the long-term outdoor cooling perfectly well. The results are very encouraging, since the cooling of the data centres stands for 20-40% of their power consumption, sometimes even more in older data centres.

The greenhouse on the roof is surrounded by an experimental green belt. It is a part of the Fifth Dimension project and World Design Capital Helsinki 2012. The purpose of the green belt is to discover the best solution for roof gardens in Finland.

Professor Jussi Kangasharju and researcher Mikko Pervilä are the Computer Science Department members of the project Heating up the fifth dimension.

See how the plants grow and the research progresses >>

Text: Minna Meriläinen-Tenhu
Photo: Mikko Pervilä
Translation: Marina Kurtén
 

Created date

14.08.2012 - 16:44

Not just the local hero

For the Department of Computer Science, the well-being of international staff has a long history. Everyday communication in English is an essential part of this.

“It makes no sense to be just the local hero. If we want to develop further, we’ll need to follow international research standards” emphasises Juergen Muench. The German Professor has been leading the Software Systems Engineering research group at Helsinki University’s Department of Computer Science since 2011.

Linus Torvalds inspiring department students


Linus Torvalds – alumnus of the department, doctor honoris causa of the University of Helsinki, the best known representative of Finnish computer science internationally – visited the Kumpula campus on 23 October. He answered the questions of students and staff during an informal Q&A session attended by some 300 guests. As the floor was open, and Torvalds emphasized that all questions were welcomed, the queries ranged from extreme to extreme

Exactum rooftop greenhouse experiment grows herbs

A greenhouse has been built on the roof of Exactum in a collaboration by the Department of Computer Science and the Fifth Dimension science project. To begin with, sedum grass is growing on the roof and tomatoes, courgettes and chilli in the greenhouse. The greenhouse is 9.4 square metres large.

The motivation for the computer scientists is the estimation that 2% of the greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans are emitted by equipment using information technology. This is more than e.g. air traffic produces globally. To the scientists, this is reason enough to look into how to decrease the impact of information technology on global warming.

Study, teach and do what is fun

New postgraduates have recently been selected for the HeCSE graduate school that the department shares with Aalto University. One of the rising young researchers is Antti Laaksonen.

 

Antti finished his Master’s degree in spring 2011. Those whose job description includes reading lightweight Scrum theses written for the industry may be heartened by the fact that this student wrote his thesis on a most essential area of computer science, i.e. minimization of regular expressions. Antti chose his topic himself, because it was ‘interesting and suitably challenging.’