NIIS has previously (2021–2023) addressed X-Road sustainability by conducting a study of the environmental impact of X-Road and the possibilities of reducing it (including the Emissions Calculator). In addition, there have been internal investigations for evaluating the sustainability of the X-Road development process and integrating “green” software development principles into X-Road's current development process (2023). Furthermore, a public X-Road Academy course Sustainability in Software Development has been created.
In 2023, a dedicated research project X-Road Sustainability Improvement Study was conducted. The research themes were X-Road software development process environmental impacts evaluation and improvement opportunities discovery, X-Road environmental handprint evaluation, and X-Road carbon footprint measurement in actual operative environments comparing to the X-Road Emissions Calculator estimations.
Grounding on the abovementioned prior works, the planned aims of this study were to investigate the following themes:
X-Road technical sustainability (WP1).
Environmental sustainability of X-Road ecosystems (WP2).
Sustainability by X-Road through SDGs (WP3).