SAUSE: Secure, Adaptive, Usable Software Engineering
Lead Research Organisation:
The Open University
Department Name: Faculty of Sci, Tech, Eng & Maths (STEM)
Abstract
In the last decade, the role of software engineering has changed rapidly and radically. Globalisation and mobility of people and services, pervasive computing, and ubiquitous connectivity through the Internet have disrupted traditional software engineering boundaries and practices. People and services are no longer bound by physical locations. Computational devices are no longer bound to the devices that host them. Communication, in its broadest sense, is no longer bounded in time or place.
The Software Engineering & Design (SEAD) group at the Open University (OU) is leading software engineering research in this new reality that requires a paradigm shift in the way software is developed and used. This platform grant will grow and sustain strategic, multi-disciplinary, crosscutting research activities that underpin the advances in software engineering required to build the pervasive and ubiquitous computing systems that will be tightly woven into the fabric of a complex and changing socio-technical world.
In addition to sustaining and growing the SEAD group at the OU and supporting its continued collaboration with the Social Psychology research group at the University of Exeter, the SAUSE platform will also enable the group to have lasting impact across several application domains such as healthcare, aviation, policing, and sustainability. The grant will allow the team to enhance the existing partner networks in these areas and to develop impact pathways for their research, going beyond the scope and lifetime of individual research projects.
The Software Engineering & Design (SEAD) group at the Open University (OU) is leading software engineering research in this new reality that requires a paradigm shift in the way software is developed and used. This platform grant will grow and sustain strategic, multi-disciplinary, crosscutting research activities that underpin the advances in software engineering required to build the pervasive and ubiquitous computing systems that will be tightly woven into the fabric of a complex and changing socio-technical world.
In addition to sustaining and growing the SEAD group at the OU and supporting its continued collaboration with the Social Psychology research group at the University of Exeter, the SAUSE platform will also enable the group to have lasting impact across several application domains such as healthcare, aviation, policing, and sustainability. The grant will allow the team to enhance the existing partner networks in these areas and to develop impact pathways for their research, going beyond the scope and lifetime of individual research projects.
Planned Impact
The research undertaken in the SAUSE platform will be shaped by in-depth interactions with end-users and with problem owners in the industry, government, and academia, and the platform will support a diverse set of impact activities. Influence, experience, and expertise of individuals and organisations supporting the platform, as strategic partners and members of a research advisory board, will help us guide the planning and execution of these impact activities. These will specifically aim to exploit the results of the SAUSE platform research instruments, namely the technical and empirical infrastructures, and exemplars, as well as the pilot projects described in the proposal.
The planned impact activities will engage a variety of stakeholders, with the goal of identifying and delivering benefits to software engineering communities of practice, policy makers, industry, professional communities of practice in the application domains targeted by the platform, and society at large. The proposed impact activities are designed to maximise the potential benefit to the different stakeholder groups and include
- public engagement activities with citizens, policy makers, and domain practitioners
- education and training resources for software engineering and domain practitioners
- software tools, middleware frameworks, and demonstrators, made available under open source licenses
- media engagement activities using social and mainstream media
- policy impact reports highlighting evidence-based risks and opportunities from the technologies we are developing
Additional impact will arise through career development for early career researchers (ECRs) through research exchange visits to leading industry and academic research labs, hospitals and clinics, in both complementary areas of computing and other relevant disciplines (e.g., social sciences, healthcare, sustainability) as well as providing support for the development of research papers and proposals through dedicated workshops, training, and peer review activities.
The planned impact activities will engage a variety of stakeholders, with the goal of identifying and delivering benefits to software engineering communities of practice, policy makers, industry, professional communities of practice in the application domains targeted by the platform, and society at large. The proposed impact activities are designed to maximise the potential benefit to the different stakeholder groups and include
- public engagement activities with citizens, policy makers, and domain practitioners
- education and training resources for software engineering and domain practitioners
- software tools, middleware frameworks, and demonstrators, made available under open source licenses
- media engagement activities using social and mainstream media
- policy impact reports highlighting evidence-based risks and opportunities from the technologies we are developing
Additional impact will arise through career development for early career researchers (ECRs) through research exchange visits to leading industry and academic research labs, hospitals and clinics, in both complementary areas of computing and other relevant disciplines (e.g., social sciences, healthcare, sustainability) as well as providing support for the development of research papers and proposals through dedicated workshops, training, and peer review activities.
Publications
Brown MAJ
(2022)
Impacts of Heterogeneous Chemistry on Vertical Profiles of Martian Ozone.
in Journal of geophysical research. Planets
Elphick C
(2021)
Building trust in digital policing: a scoping review of community policing apps
in Police Practice and Research
Elphick C
(2021)
Digital Detectives: Websleuthing Reduces Eyewitness Identification Accuracy in Police Lineups.
in Frontiers in psychology
Farahani A
(2021)
On Adaptive Fairness in Software Systems
Farahani A
(2021)
On Adaptive Fairness in Software Systems
Gavidia-Calderon C
(2022)
What Do YouWant From Me? Adapting Systems to the Uncertainty of Human Preferences
Gavidia-Calderon C
(2022)
What Do You Want From Me? Adapting Systems to the Uncertainty of Human Preferences
Description | The project has contributed a wide range of software engineering innovations that have seen applications in healthcare (& social care), policing (and security/privacy/forensics), and and aviation (drones). A key thread has been the interdisciplinary contributions between social psychology and software engineering, that have been published in both top psychology and software engineering journals. The work has shown that an understanding of groups, and communities, can be recognised and supported by software technologies that leads to socio-technical starters that are more dependable, usable and useful. |
Exploitation Route | The many outcomes of this funding are being explored technically by other researchers, but also as an example of inter-disciplinary research that can be replicated by others. |
Sectors | Aerospace Defence and Marine Agriculture Food and Drink Communities and Social Services/Policy Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Education Healthcare Leisure Activities including Sports Recreation and Tourism Government Democracy and Justice Culture Heritage Museums and Collections Security and Diplomacy Transport |
URL | http://sead.open.ac.uk |
Description | This is a current/ongoing EPSRC Platform Grant which is continuing to meet its goals of supporting research group staff and students, bridging fixed term contracts, engaging in focused research support activity (such as software tool development), leveraging (successfully) the funding to attract further more substantive grants. Nevertheless, the support of this grant let to a number of impactful threads of work: - work on adaptive security let to applications in the security products and services or companies (names redacted), which led to award if FRENg (to Prof Nuseibeh) - during the Covid pandemic, a digital platform called the "gratitude tree" was developed and deployed, with many thousands of users using it to express their thanks to members of their social and professional communities (https://gratitude-tree.org).This work was led by co-I Professor Arosha Bandara. - building on this a other UKRI support, "Paidpad" a device for logging patients' pan levels (post surgery) has been developed and deployed in Milton Keynes University Hospital and recently received an innovation award - reported elsewhere (led by co-I Prof Blaine Price). |
First Year Of Impact | 2018 |
Sector | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Agriculture, Food and Drink,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice,Retail,Security and Diplomacy,Transport |
Impact Types | Societal Economic Policy & public services |
Description | Citizen Forensics |
Amount | £1,093,594 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/R033862/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 08/2018 |
End | 08/2022 |
Description | SERVICE: Social and Emotional Resilience for the Vulnerable Impacted by the COVID-19 Emergency |
Amount | £400,243 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/V027263/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 07/2020 |
End | 01/2022 |
Description | Socio-technical resilience in software development (STRIDE) |
Amount | £610,573 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/T017465/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 06/2020 |
End | 06/2024 |
Description | The Internet of Food Things |
Amount | £1,139,958 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/R045127/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 04/2018 |
End | 04/2022 |
Description | UK Manufacturing Symbiosis NetworkPlus (UKMSN+) |
Amount | £892,577 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/S036091/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 11/2019 |
End | 03/2023 |
Description | UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node in Resilience |
Amount | £3,063,678 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/V026747/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 11/2020 |
End | 04/2024 |
Title | PainPad Hardware, iOS/Android Apps and backend infrastructure |
Description | The PainPad hardware device (recently patented) along with a two new apps (one for nurses and one for patients) and the backend infrastructure to support them allows in-patients at Milton Keynes Unviersity Hospital to self-log pain in order to save nurse time as well as to produce data to inform future treatment. |
Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
Year Produced | 2023 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | Nurses can now have live self-reported pain data so they can intervene with analgesia before pain becomes severe. The data sets produced have lead to 3 medical papers currently in preparation or under review. |
URL | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pain.pad&hl=en_US |
Title | Digital Detectives: Websleuthing Reduces Eyewitness Identification Accuracy in Police Lineups (dataset).xlsx |
Description | This dataset was used for the analysis in the article Digital Detectives: Websleuthing Reduces Eyewitness Identification Accuracy in Police Lineups. The article explores whether searching for a culprit on social media affects eyewitnesses' subsequent identification accuracy in a police lineup. Results showed a significant association between social media exposure and lineup accuracy for the Target Present lineup (30% more of the participants who saw the lookalike on social media failed to positively identify the culprit than participants in the other conditions), but for the Target Absent lineup (which also included the lookalike) there was no significant association with lineup identification accuracy. The results suggest that if an eyewitness sees a lookalike (where they are expecting to see the culprit) when conducting a self-directed search on social media, they are less likely to subsequently identify the culprit in the formal ID procedure. The dataset includes demographics, response type and accuracy, and confidence ratings data for each of the participant conditions. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2022 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | Not yet. |
URL | https://ordo.open.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Digital_Detectives_Websleuthing_Reduces_Eyewitness_Identifi... |
Description | CAA National AIR Traffic Contr |
Organisation | Department of Transport |
Department | Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
Start Year | 2005 |
Description | National Institute of Informatics (NII) |
Organisation | National Institute of Informatics (NII) |
Country | Japan |
Sector | Public |
Start Year | 2005 |
Title | LINKING SOURCE CODE WITH COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS |
Description | Concepts for linking source code with compliance requirements are presented. One example comprises analyzing a set of compliance requirements to identify one or more compliance topics. The example further comprises determining keywords for the identified one or more compliance topics. An item of source code is then analyzed to identify occurrences of the keywords in the source code. Mapping information representing a relationship between the item of source code and the compliance requirements is then generated based on the identified occurrence of the keywords. |
IP Reference | US2020117573 |
Protection | Patent granted |
Year Protection Granted | 2020 |
Licensed | No |
Impact | N/A (yet) |
Title | Painpad |
Description | A handheld device for self-logging pain. |
IP Reference | 1909746.8 |
Protection | Patent / Patent application |
Year Protection Granted | 2021 |
Licensed | No |
Impact | none yet. |
Title | RELEVANCE OF A SOURCE CODE CHANGE TO COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS |
Description | Concepts for identifying relevance of a source code change to compliance requirements are presented. One example comprises obtaining mapping information linking an item of source code with a set of compliance requirements, the mapping information representing a relationship between the item of source and the set of compliance requirements. A changed element of an item of source code is identified. The mapping information is analyzed based on the changed element to determine if the changed element relates to a compliance requirement. If it is determined that the changed element relates to a compliance requirement, an indication of th compliance requirement is generated. |
IP Reference | US2020117427 |
Protection | Patent granted |
Year Protection Granted | 2020 |
Licensed | No |
Impact | N/A |
Title | Gratitude Tree |
Description | Gratitude Tree is a digital (web-based) tool developed to allow people to share their appreciation and positivity - developed during, and following, the Covid-19 global pandemic. It allows people to add "leaves of thanks" on thematic (group) trees, and the website collectively is a "forest of thanks". The aim is to promote pro-social behaviour (gratitude) in a digital form with a physical metaphor. |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2020 |
Impact | So far many thousands of people from around the world have planted gratitude trees, and added messages of gratitude relating to their communities. Some of this data is being used for research into this kind of digital technology (published as a late breaking result in the flagship CHI 2024 conferece), and the gratitude tree platform is available for further research in the future to study prosocial behaviour and digital technology. |
URL | https://gratitude-tree.org |
Title | PainPad |
Description | Apps for Patients and Nurses on the iOS App Store and Android Play Store for in-patients to self-report pain. |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2023 |
Impact | More timely and accurate patient pain data is recorded saving nurse time. Nurses can intervene with analgesia before pain reaches critical levels. Clinicians have access to better data for research. |
Description | Invited Keynote at MBSE 2023 - on responsible software engineering |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Invited keynote presentation at Huawei International conference on model based software engineering, to worldwide R&D workforce. Hybrid event with estimated over 700 attendees. Including engaged worldwide Q&A session. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | Invited Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node in Verifiability talk |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Gave UKRI TAS Node in Verifiability seminar on 22 April 2021, attended by members of the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems network. The talk led to discussions about novel techniques for ensuring collaboration between autonomous systems as well as between autonomous systems and humans. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
URL | https://verifiability.org/events/ |
Description | Invited talk - Specifying for Trustworthiness workshop at TAS All Hands meeting |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Gave a talk to TAS Hub Researchers on specifying (and reasoning about) Cooperation between Autonomous Systems and Humans. The talk led to discussion about integrating the difference perspective on cooperation, and the development of a follow up paper. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
Description | Keynote at ACI 2022 - International Conference on Animal Computer Interaction |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Keynote presentation to a diverse audience outside usual software engineering, including researchers and practitioners involved n animal-computer interaction research, animal welfare, ethics and computing. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://www.aciconf.org |
Description | Keynote at Context-aware, Autonomous and Smart Architecture Workshop co-located with the 16th European Conference on Software Architecture |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Gave a keynote entitled "The Road to Collaboration is Paved with Goals' that explores the role of goals in supporting autonomy and collaboration. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://casaecsa.github.io/casa2022/ |
Description | RE 2019 Keynote by Bashar Nuseibeh |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Gave opening keynote at flagship RE 2019 conference in South Korea, September 2019. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
URL | http://re19.ajou.ac.kr/pages/conference/keynote_speakers/ |
Description | SA 2021Discourse/Debate by Bashar Nuseibeh |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Gave plenary presentation at Societal Automation Conference (online/Madeira) in May 2021, followed by plenary debate with Professor Marta Kwiatkowska (University of Oxford) . |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
Description | Women in Machine Learning and Data Science |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | This was a talk entitled Machine Learning and Software Engineering: Separated by a Common Language, , which led to interesting discussions between researchers, practitioners and academics on the topic of machine learning and responsible software engineering. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |