Sustainable Software Engineering 🌱

Edition of 2023/24
MSc in Computer Science, Delft University of Technology

Sustainable Software Engineering is an overarching discipline that addresses the long-term consequences of designing, building, and releasing a software project. By definition, sustainability covers five main perspectives: environmental, social, individual, economic, technical. This course focuses on the first three.

Sustainability Domains

Software Engineering (SE) has long addressed sustainability by narrowing it down to economical and technical sustainability. However, our society is facing major sustainability challenges that can no longer be overlooked by software engineers and computer scientists. It was estimated that, by 2040, the ICT sector will contribute to 14% of the global carbon footprint. Hence, environmental, social, and individual ought to be part of the equation when it comes to design, build, and release software systems. The problem is far from simple, but we need expert computer scientists to bring sustainability into the core values of the next generation of tech-leading organisations.

This course covers a set of competencies needed to leverage sustainable software systems. It has a strong component on Green SE, covering techniques to measure and improve the energy-efficiency at any stage of the software lifecycle. Students learn state-of-the-art practices on energy efficiency and apply them in real software projects. Moreover, the course will cover core principles of empirical software engineering, and social and individual sustainability.

Organisation

Course code CS4415
Brightspace đź”’ https://brightspace.tudelft.nl/d2l/home/595278
Instructors LuĂ­s Cruz, June Sallou
Schedule Mondays 10:45, Wednesdays 13:45, Thursdays 8:45. đź”— MyTimetable.
Mattermost Link shared on Brightspace.
Zoom link Link shared on Mattermost.
ECTS 5.0
Quarter Q3
Format Classes are optimised for in-person attendance;
Online attendance is allowed in a case by case scenario.
Examination type Group Project 1 (40%); Group Project 2 (60%).
Target audience Students of the [M.Sc. in Computer Science].
Requirements - Intermediate understanding of OOP languages;
- Basic understanding of data analysis techniques.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course you will be able to:

Outline

⚠️ Please note: Recordings are only available to the students because they are not edited and may include students’ interactions.

Class Week Summary
1 1 Lecture. Course introduction. Sustainable Software: What, Why and How.
đź“ŠSlides in-person
2 1 Lab. Measuring software energy consumption. Introduction to Project 1.
📊Slides 🎥Recording in-person
3 1 Lecture. Green Software Engineering — Part I: units of energy.
📊Slides 🎥Recording in-person
4 2 Project. Project 1 - steering meeting and formative assessment. in-person
5 2 Lecture. Green Software Engineering — Part II: Scientific guide for reliable energy measurements. 📊Slides in-person
6 2 Guest Lecture (Feb 22). “Following the Sun” to Mitigate the Carbon Footprint of Training AI Algorithms: is it Worth the Price?. 📊Slides in-person
7 3 Project. Project 1 - steering meeting. in-person
8 3 Lecture. Green AI. 📊Slides 🎥Recording in-person
9 3 Lecture. Green Software Engineering — Part III: Energy efficiency in mobile computing; carbon-aware data centres. 📊Slides 🎥Recording in-person
  3 Deadline for project 1 Friday, March 1.
10 4 Project. Project 2 - Description and kick-off. đź“ŠSlides in-person
11 4 Guest Lecture (Mar 6). Energy-aware hardware, Nergis Tömen. in-person
12 4 Lecture. Approximate Computing for Green Software. in-person
  5 Project 2 - steering meeting 1. hybrid
  6 Project 2 - steering meeting 2. hybrid
  7 Project 2 - steering meeting 3. online
19 7 Deadline project 2 – March 28.
20 8 Presentation project 2 – April 4.

Assignments

Below the description of each project.

🛠 Project 1 – Measuring Software Energy Consumption

🛠 Project 2 – Hacking Sustainability

Further reading (optional)

Interesting pointers