SAUSE: Secure, Adaptive, Usable Software Engineering

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 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.