BCS THE CHARTERED INSTITUTE FOR IT

BCS HIGHER EDUCATION QUALIFICATIONS

IT AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Wednesday 4th October 2023 - Afternoon

Answer any THREE questions out of FIVE. All questions carry equal marks.

Time: THREE hours

Answer any Section A questions you attempt in Answer Book A

The marks given in brackets are indicative of the weight given to each part of the question.

Calculators are NOT allowed in this examination.

A1. B3.

Your organisation is planning the deployment of new user devices, and the disposal of old a) Define what is meant by Remote Sensing and list FOUR of its types.
equipment. Your Chief Technical Officer (CTO) has asked you to evaluate the environmental (12 marks)
impact of the activity.
b) A company is using remote sensing to monitor the change of use in forest areas in
a) Discuss FOUR actions you could take prior to the purchase of the items to ensure the South American countries. It is going to expand its work to cover more countries. The
lowest possible environmental impact. company has a small data centre close to the city centre, to manage and process the
(16 marks) data. The data centre is old and cannot support this extra work.

b) Discuss THREE actions you could take for the disposal of the old equipment. One manager suggests that the company should build a new, larger, data centre
(9 marks) further away from the city centre to replace the current one. Another manager
suggests using Cloud Computing instead of building a data centre.

A2. Discuss the environmental advantages and disadvantages of these two suggestions.
Explain which suggestion may be the better environmental option for the company
Your Chief Technical Officer (CTO) has asked you to investigate the embodied and potential and why.
operational carbon emissions of your planned new data centre. (13 marks)

a) Explain and provide TWO examples of embodied and operational carbon emissions
as they apply to data centre construction and data centre operations. B4.
(10 marks)
a) Discuss the benefits of IT in the energy sector. Include examples to illustrate your
b) Identify ISO standards that will help to understand operational carbon, and briefly answer.
discuss activities that may help to reduce operational carbon. (10 marks)
(9 marks)
b) A university is moving from its current buildings in the centre of a city. It is developing
c) Describe what construction materials could be present in the building fabric of a data a new campus, further from the city centre. The university has decided to build an
centre and some possible lower carbon replacements. environmentally friendly campus using smart devices.
(6 marks)
Identify FIVE types of sensors that could be used in these smart devices. Discuss
how each sensor will help to improve the environmental impact of the new campus.
(15 marks)

B5.

a) Employees at a large software company worked at home during the pandemic. Many
staff still work at home. The company’s management want all employees to return to
work in the offices, full time. The employees are going to meet with management to
ask for rules to allow remote working from home.

To help everyone prepare for the meeting, write a short report that discusses the
advantages and disadvantages of remote working, for the environment and the
company.
(15 marks)

b) Define the Internet of Things (IoT) and describe TWO different communication
protocols that the IoT devices can use.
(10 marks)

END OF EXAMINATION

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