DCWatch: the digital common for data centre footprints
DCWatch is a collaborative research project, aiming to permit society to better understand the dynamics of datacenters expansion and their past, current and future footprint on both society and the environment.
To do this, we gather and analyze, publicly accessible data on datacenters, regarding multiple dimensions.
DC Claro, Buenos Aires, photo taken by Cécile Diguet
Features: indicators DCWatch focusses on
Indicators considered in DCWatch are at least, but not limited to:
- 🏢 Surface metrics : IT rooms floor area, building land footprint, land plot surface, what was the nature of the ground prior installation, etc.
- 🛢️ Fossil energy metrics : How much fossil fuels are stored and used on site, what kind of fuels, how the global and local consumptions are evolving, what is the capacity of electricity generators, etc.
- ⚡ Electricity metrics : What is the total power installed, what is the share of this power dedicated to IT rooms, how many power links are installed for redundancy, how important is the load factor, how much energy is consumed both from the national grid and from local generators, etc.
- 💧 How much water is collected, consumed and rejected, how ?
- ❄️ What cooling technologies are used ?
To enable collecting or modelling those metrics, usual performance indicators are to be collected and challenged as well : PUE, WUE, CUE, ERF, REF, etc.
How to use DCWatch data ?
Warning
This work is primarily an aggregation of data from multiple sources. You need to credit the project DCWatch, according to the ObDL licence, but also respect the licence of the data sources. Please read the Licenses, credits and sources section to apply the proper rules using the data.
Get the latest available data by selecting a recent release package: here.
This project has been started by Hubblo but aims to include more people in the maintainance team.
Other projects using DCWatch data
Do you develop a map or dataviz app and want to be cited here ? 👋
Please open a pull-request !