Project Description:

Every piece of data stored online incurs an energy draw - this is an unavoidable overhead, and results in a subsequent financial and environmental cost. Practices which allow more efficient operation in the cloud are therefore of increasing interest given recent change in our online activities and the resulting volume of data stored here. Another issue of increasing importance is the challenge of managing the data which belongs to people who have passed away, data which incurs a wasted energy cost as it is stored without purpose [1]. Companies are slowly reacting to this situation and are subsequently adapting their Terms of Service to take this into account:
"No Right of Survivorship and Non-Transferability. Your Yahoo Account is non-transferable and any rights to your Yahoo ID or contents within your account will be cancelled upon your death. If we receive a copy of a death certificate, the relevant account may be cancelled and all its contents permanently deleted" [Yahoo!, Terms of Service, January 2014].

The challenge occurs, however, in the instance that a death certificate is not received by the online company and it is not possible to identify that the data will no longer be used in the manner originally intended.

While it is difficult to overcome the financial cost on the part of the service provider to retain this data redundantly in the cloud, there are opportunities for more efficient operation when the data will not be accessed or used. There is therefore an opportunity for proactive operation by the cloud management system - techniques are currently limited in the extent to which this occurs today.

The objective of this project is therefore to develop a cloud management algorithm to manage online resources for efficiency objectives and, specifically, remove those resources from the cloud once they are identified as being stored redundantly and are no longer accessed by a living person. Decisions could be taken by the management mechanism which are dependent on the duration of time for which the data has been inactive. The scheme could also involve reorganising data in the cloud for improved operational efficiency, a technique applicable to data which is accessed less frequently.

The implementation can take different approaches. The implementation can take place using C++ within an open source network simulation software such as NS3 [2] or OMNeT++ [3]. The implementation can also take place within an open source virtualisation environment, such as OpenStack (Python) or VirtualBox (range of languages).

References:
[1] S. Curtis, "Beyond the Grave: Have you Planned your Digital Legacy?," Belfast Telegraph, Mar. 2015; Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11475906/Beyond-the-grave-have-you-planned-your-digital-legacy.html. 
[2] NS-3 Homepage; Available at: https://www.nsnam.org/.
[3] OMNeT++ Homepage; Available at: https://omnetpp.org/.
[4] Google, "Inactive Account Manager"; Available at: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en.
[5] Dropbox Help Center; Available at: https://www.dropbox.com/help/9080.