The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in Systems Engineering: Eliciting sustainability requirements

This paper discusses a PhD research project testing the hypothesis that using the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals(SDG) as explicit inputs to drive the Software Requirements Engineering process will result in requirements with improved sustainability benefits. The research has adopted the Design Science Research Method (DSRM) [21] to test a process named SDG Assessment for Requirements Elicitation (SDGARE). Three DSRM cycles are being used to test the hypothesis in safety-critical, highprecision, software-intensive systems in aerospace and healthcare. Initial results from the first two DSRM cycles support the hypothesis. However, these cycles are in a plan-driven (waterfall) development context and future research agenda would be a similar application in an Agile development context.Comment: 7th International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S2020), June 21--26, 2020, Bristol, United Kingdom. ACM has non-exclusive licence to publis

Barriers to Implementing the International Integrated Reporting Framework: A Contemporary Academic Perspective

Purpose: This paper is motivated by the International Integrated Reporting Council’s (IIRC) call for feedback from all stakeholders with knowledge of the International Integrated Reporting Framework , and specifically of the enablers, incentives and barriers to its implementation. The paper synthesises insights from contemporary accounting research into integrated reporting (IR) as a general concept, and integrated reporting as espoused by the IIRC in the (IIRC, 2013). We specifically focus on possible barriers and emphasise the specific issues we feel could be rectified to advance the , along with the areas that may potentially hinder wider adoption and implementation. Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws upon and synthesises academic analysis and insights provided in the IR and academic literature as well as various directives, policy and framework pronouncements. Findings: The flexibility and lack of prescription concerning actual disclosures and metrics in the could allow it to be used for compliance, regardless of the other benefits lauded by the IIRC. Thus we see forces, both external and internal, driving adoption, with one prominent example being the European Union Directive on non-financial reporting. Because of the different ways in which IR is understood and enacted, there are numerous theoretical and empirical challenges for academics. Our paper highlights potential areas for further robust academic research, and the need to contribute to policy and practice. Research limitations/implications: The paper provides the IIRC, academics, regulators and reporting organisations with insights into current practice and the framework. We highlight the need for further development and evidence to help inform improvements both from a policy and a practice perspective. A key limitation of our work is that we draw upon a synthesis of the existing literature which is still in an early stage of development. Originality/value: The paper provides the IIRC with several insights into the current , and specifically with the enablers, incentives and barriers to its implementation. Also, it provides academic researchers with a number of important observations and an agenda upon which they can build their future research

Empirical Validation of Cyber-Foraging Architectural Tactics for Surrogate Provisioning

Background Cyber-foraging architectural tactics are used to build mobile applications that leverage proximate, intermediate cloud surrogates for computation offload and data staging. Compared to direct access to cloud resources, the use of intermediate surrogates improves system qualities such as response time, energy efficiency, and resilience. However, the state-of-the-art mostly focuses on introducing new architectural tactics rather than quantitatively comparing the existing tactics, which can help software architects and software engineers with new insights on each tactic. Aim Our work aims at empirically evaluating the architectural tactics for surrogate provisioning, specifically with respect to resilience and energy efficiency. Method We follow a systematic experimentation framework to collect relevant data on Static Surrogate Provisioning and Dynamic Surrogate Provisioning tactics. Our experimentation approach can be reused for validation of other cyber-foraging tactics. We perform statistical analysis to support our hypotheses, as compared to baseline measurements with no cyber-foraging tactics deployed. Results Our findings show that Static Surrogate Provisioning tactics provide higher resilience than Dynamic Surrogate Provisioning tactics for runtime environmental changes. Both surrogate provisioning tactics perform with no significant difference with respect to their energy efficiency. We observe that the overhead of the runtime optimization algorithm is similar for both tactic types. Conclusions The presented quantitative evidence on the impact of different tactics empowers software architects and software engineers with the ability to make more conscious design decisions. This contribution, as a starting point, emphasizes the use of quantifiable metrics to make better-informed trade-offs between desired quality attributes. Our next step is to focus on the impact of runtime programmable infrastructure on the quality of cyber-foraging systems