Software requirements for energy efficiency in information systemscatalogue and Applications

Abstract

Information and Communication Technologies are rooted in modern societies. They create wealth and welfare, and can be found in several areas of everyday life, such as health, financial or media sectors. Despite their important contribution to the community, their massive usage is not accompanied by a widespread energy awareness. Moreover, the ubiquity of the information systems increase their use and, therefore, the demand of energy. In most of cases electronic devices are used carelessly in terms of energy consumption. Energy production has a major impact on the environment when non-renewable resources are used. There is a mistaken belief that the use of a single electronic device generates such a small amount of pollution that it is negligible. This idea might be truth from a local perspective. However, the high number of electronic devices on the planet makes the total impact significant. The alarming environmental situation accelerates energy efficiency to be considered as a quality attribute in technology, reducing its impact on the planet. Given the current deteriorating environmental situation, there is a need to offer technological solutions that are more sustainable. Traditionally, work has focused on producing greener energy, as well as generating hardware devices that require less energy to operate. However, the software, which governs the operation of the hardware, also has an important role to play in reducing the energy consumption of the technology. In this doctoral thesis, the hypothesis was as follows: the reduction of the energy consumption that a software system generates in a hardware system can be achieved by reusing a catalogue of software requirements. The requirements in software projects are fundamental when it comes to defining the technological solution to a given problem. The level of detail of a software requirements specification varies depending on the time and effort put into it in the early stages of the project. It is very common that software energy efficiency is not considered in the development cycle. In this situation, the need arises to define an artifact that promotes the use of energy consumption requirements to design information systems. Sustainability requirements comprise the set of software features that generate a change in the energy consumption of a hardware system. The main contributions of the research carried out as a PhD student are the following: (1) to expose the real situation of the application of sustainability measures and habits in software; (2) to detect the gaps and difficulties faced by a computer engineer when developing sustainable software; (3) to propose an artifact that allows facilitating the task of generating software with energy efficiency aspects; (4) to validate the artifact. With the results obtained in this thesis, it has been demonstrated that through software it is possible to reduce energy consumption in a given hardware. However, work will continue in this line of research to extend the results and also to propose a model for auditing energy sustainability in software systems.