A Methodology and a Toolbox to Explore Dataset related to the Environmental Impact of HTTP Requests

EcoIndex has been proposed to evaluate the absolute environmental performance of a given URL using a score ranging from 0 to 100 (the higher, the better). In this article, we make a critical analysis of the initial approach and propose alternatives that no longer calculate a plain score but allow the query to be situated among other queries. The generalized critiques come with statistics and rely on extensive experiments (first contribution). Then, we move on to low-cost Machine Learning (ML) approaches (second contribution) and a transition before obtaining our final results (third contribution). Our research aims to extend the initial idea of analytical computation, i.e., a relation between three variables, in the direction of algorithmic ML computations. The fourth contribution corresponds to a discussion on our implementation, available on a GitHub repository. Along with the paper, we invite the reader to examine the question: What attributes make sense for our problem?, or equivalently, what is a relevant data policy for studying digital environmental impacts? Beyond computational questions, it is important for the scientific community to focus on this question in particular. We currently promote using well-established ML techniques because of their potential, which we discuss in the paper. However, we also question techniques for their frugality or otherwise. Our data science project is still at the data exploration stage. We also want to encourage synergy between technical expertise and business knowledge because this is fundamental for advancing the data project.