Sustainable Software Engineering 🌱
Edition of 2024/25
MSc Computer Science and MSc Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Technology, 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.
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 🔒 | https://brightspace.tudelft.nl/d2l/home/680663 |
| Instructors | Luís Cruz, Carolin Brandt |
| Schedule | Mondays 8:45, Wednesdays 10:45, Thursdays 10:45. 🔗 MyTimetable. |
| Mattermost | [Sign Up Link]. |
| ECTS | 5.0 |
| Quarter | Q3 |
| Format | Classes are optimised for in-person attendance. |
| Examination type | Group Project 1 (40%); Group Project 2 (60%). |
| Target audience | Students of the [MSc in Computer Science] and the MSc Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Technology. |
| 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:
- LO1. Explain the fundamental sustainability principles and their relevance to software engineering.
- LO2. Assess the energy consumption of software systems using measurement and testing techniques.
- LO3. Create actionable strategies to address sustainability issues within software organisations.
- LO4. Evaluate and compare different solutions for sustainable software systems based on their effectiveness in achieving sustainability goals and their potential impact on various stakeholders.
Outline
⚠️ Please note: The following outline is subject to changes; Recordings are available through Collegerama.
| Class | Week | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Lecture. Course introduction. Sustainable Software: What, Why and How. |
| 2 | 1 | Lab. Measuring software energy consumption. Introduction to Project 1. |
| 3 | 1 | Lecture. Green Software Engineering — Part I: Scientific guide for reliable energy measurements. |
| 4 | 2 | Lecture. Social and Individual Sustainability. |
| 5 | 2 | Project. Project 1 - steering meeting and formative assessment. |
| 6 | 2 | Lecture. Green Software Engineering — Part II: units of energy. |
| 7 | 3 | Lecture. Green Software Engineering — Part III: Energy efficiency in mobile computing; carbon-aware data centres. |
| 8 | 3 | Project. Project 1 - steering meeting. |
| 9 | 3 | Lecture. Green AI. |
| 3 | ⏰ Deadline for Project 1 Friday, Feb 28. | |
| 10 | 4 | Project. Project 2 - Description and kick-off. |
| 11 | 4 | Guest Lecture (Mar 5). Neuromorphic Computing, Nergis Tömen. |
| 12 | 4 | Lecture. Approximate Computing for Green Software, [June Sallou] - To be confirmed. |
| 5 | Project 2 - steering meeting 1. | |
| 6 | Project 2 - steering meeting 2. | |
| 7 | Project 2 - steering meeting 3. | |
| 8 | Project 2 - steering meeting 4. | |
| 19 | 8 | ⏰ Deadline Project 2 – April 4. |
| 20 | 9 | Presentation Project 2 – April 11. |
Assignments
Below the description of each project.
🛠 Project 1 – Measuring Software Energy Consumption
- Goal: Compare energy consumption in common software use cases.
- Examples:
- Different versions of the same app;
- Same use case but different apps
- Same version, same app, but different user settings (e.g., enable/disable GPU optimisation)
- Same version, same app, but different running environment
- Different versions of the same app;
- Examples:
- Blog-style report (markdown, approx 2500 words).
- Bonus if you can automate the experiment and there is a replication package.
- Submission by pull request to the website. Instructions here.
- Blog-style report (markdown, approx 2500 words).
- Replication package.
- Weight in final grade: 40%
- Deadline Friday, Feb 28
🛠 Project 2 – Hacking Sustainability
- Goal: Solve a Sustainable Software Engineering problem.
- Identify/Describe 1 problem that should be fixed to help enabling sustainability in the software engineering industry/community. You can reuse ideas from the slides.
- Propose a solution. It can be a tool, framework, guidelines, etc.
- Implement the solution.
- Validation. (Depending on the idea)
- Dissemination/social impact. (E.g., solution should be open source, welcome contributors, post on social media, tool website, available in package managers, etc.)
- Deliverables.
- Paper-like article. (Min 4 pages, max 10)
- Online git repo with open source codebase and/or replication package.
- Presentation: 5 min + 5min Q&A
- Weight in final grade: 60%
- Steering meeting/formative assessments: Every week from week 5 to 9.
- Deadline Friday, April 4.
- Presentation Friday, April 11.
- Submission by pull request to the website. Instructions here.
Further reading (optional)
- Cruz, L., de Bekker, P. (2023) All you need to know about Energy Metrics in Software Engineering.
- Wohlin, C., Runeson, P., Höst, M., Ohlsson, M. C., Regnell, B., & Wesslén, A. (2012). Experimentation in software engineering. Springer Science & Business Media.
- Cruz, L., & Abreu, R. (2017, May). Performance-based guidelines for energy efficient mobile applications. In 2017 IEEE/ACM 4th International Conference on Mobile Software Engineering and Systems (MOBILESoft) (pp. 46-57). IEEE.
- Cruz, L., & Abreu, R. (2019). Catalog of energy patterns for mobile applications. Empirical Software Engineering, 24(4), 2209-2235.
- Stol, K. J., & Fitzgerald, B. (2018). The ABC of software engineering research. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), 27(3), 1-51.
- Spinellis, Diomidis (2017). The Social Responsibility of Software Development. IEEE Software.
Interesting pointers
- EnergiBridge - Tool to measure energy consumption from almost any device.
- Principles of Sustainable Software Engineering
- CAT community
- Energy Patterns for Mobile Apps.
- Branch Magazine.
- Green Software Lab
- Website Carbon Calculator
- Carbon Tracker
- Greenpeace — Europe’s Green Recovery As if the planet mattered
- Green TU