Advances and Challenges of Sustainability in/by Software Engineering

Dear Colleagues,

Modern software systems are part of our industrialized society and play an important role in the lives of billions of people. The main goal of software engineering is to develop and maintain high-quality software-intensive systems that are useful for their users and valuable for their customers. However, software engineers should not just focus on the technical goals of developing systems that satisfy their requirements and project restrictions (budget, schedule). Software engineers must also address many well-known quality attributes, such as performance, security, maintainability or dependability (Fernandes and Machado, 2016). Sustainability, in particular, is emerging within the software industry as a relevant concern to consider when developing software-intensive systems.

Sustainability in/by software engineering is a multidimensional aspect that covers the following dimensions: economic, social, individual, environmental, and technical (Penzenstadler et al., 2014). The impact of software systems on sustainability can occur at three different levels: direct (such as energy usage, waste management, or control on emissions from the IT infrastructures), second-level (such as changes on user behaviors), or third-level (such as the consequence of using more software systems due to using other systems).

This Special Issue on “Advances and Challenges of Sustainability in/by Software Engineering” embraces all sorts of scientific advancements related to software engineering and sustainability. It aims to advance the knowledge on how to integrate sustainability as a major driver when developing software systems, with the aim of making software more sustainable from different perspectives (sustainability by software engineering). Sustainability can here be seen as a driver to make software systems more environmentally friendly, either during development, operation, or maintenance. Techniques, practices, and approaches that address how software systems can be made to last longer are especially welcome. This Special Issue will also consider papers that present novel methods and techniques that address how software engineering can support sustainability (sustainability by software engineering). Other papers may survey different aspects of the topic. The balance between these two types will be adjusted to maximize the overall impact of the issue.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following: green software, green IT, software maintainability, cloud computing, virtualization, energy-aware development methods, sustainable software architectures, e-waste, environmental aspects in software engineering, energy efficiency, economic/environmental impact of green IT, sustainability as a quality attribute, maintenance approaches to make software greener, social impact of green IT, and technical debt.

References:

- Birgit Penzenstadler, Ankita Raturi, Debra Richardson, amd Bill Tomlinson; Safety, Security, Now Sustainability: The Nonfunctional Requirement for the 21st Century. IEEE Software 31(3)40-47, May-June 2014.

- João M. Fernandes and Ricardo J. Machado; Requirements in engineering projects, Springer, Lecture Notes in Management and Industrial Engineering series, 2016.

Prof. João M. Fernandes
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

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• green software
• green IT
• software maintainability
• cloud computing
• virtualization
• energy-aware development methods
• sustainable software architectures
• e-waste
• environmental aspects in software engineering
• energy efficiency
• economic/environmental impact of green IT
• sustainability as a quality attribute
• maintenance approaches to make software greener
• social impact of green IT
• technical debt