Overview

The group focuses on the engineering and provision of complex software systems as part of broader socio-technical systems, structures and activities. The activities of the group are concerned with both the processes that need to be deployed in order to develop and manage the provision of software systems in ways that can effectively address the interests and requirements of different types of stakeholders (e.g. system providers, developers, users, regulators etc), and the artefacts (models) that need to be constructed in order to facilitate the understanding, analysis, verification, acceptance and effective long term management of software systems.

Within these broad areas, the research activities of the group have been focused on:

• Service-centric software systems engineering
  

  Service-centric software systems engineering has emerged as a new paradigm for developing complex software systems by orchestrating distributed software components that are available in the form of “software services” and can be deployed remotely on heterogeneous devices and infrastructures (without the need for owning them). The research of the group in this area has focused on some fundamental technical issues for the effective realisation of the new paradigm, including the discovery and composition of software services whilst designing and developing service based systems or during their operation at runtime, and the need for developing support for monitoring and adapting such systems at runtime (often in proactive rather than reactive ways) in order to address problems that can arise due to the lack of control over external software services and the potential for experiencing unexpected changes in their structure, behavior and/or quality or continuity of service provision. The group is also interested in the investigation and development of techniques for assessing and enhancing trust in service centric systems including, amongst other, techniques for dynamic assessment of software services trust, creating and managing Service Level Agreements to regulate the provision of services, and developing support for service centric systems governance.

• Distributed systems security
  

  This strand of work focuses on developing platforms for assessing statically and dynamically the effectiveness of implementations of security solutions for highly distributed systems and the extent to which such systems address certain security properties. This work includes the development of distributed event capturing mechanisms for system monitoring, negotiation protocols for the initiation and termination of monitoring activities in distributed systems without forms of centralised control and patterns for the specification of monitorable security properties. It also includes mechanisms for the detection of security threats in distributed systems.

• Software systems verification
  

  The group has been investigating into the development of techniques to support the detection, handling and diagnosis of inconsistencies in software system specifications for several years. Recently, this work focuses on the verification of dependability and security properties with an explicit focus on mobile and highly distributed systems such as service centric and peer-to-peer systems

• Software systems requirements engineering
  

  Development of techniques to support the automatic generation and maintenance of fine-grain traceability relations between different parts in the documentation of software systems. This work is based on the use of lightweight natural language processing techniques and rule-based reasoning. As part of this work, we have also investigated the application of probabilistic reasoning and machine learning techniques in the automatic generation of traceability relations. We have also looked at processes of requirement specification evolution supported by the use of abductive reasoning and inductive machine learning techniques.

• Embedded Software Systems
  

  Another area where we are applying our experience in software systems verification and description and management of Service Level Agreements for the achievement of very stringent Qualities of Service, is that of Embedded Software Systems. Many of these are either mission or safety critical systems and our research aids in their analysis, fine grain control, optimisation and verification.

Members

Academic staff:

Visiting staff:

Research staff:

Current Research students:

• Empowering the Service Economy with SLA-aware Infrastructures (SLA@SOI)
  

  Principal investigator: George Spanoudakis
  Funding: € 575,775 (€ 9.6m for the entire project)
  Funding source: EU (F7, Integrated Project)
  Duration: 2008 - 2011
  Overview: SLA@SOI aims to provide a technological framework that will address major needs of the emerging software-service intensive economy, namely: (1) The need for predicting and enforcing software service quality at runtime, (2) The need for transparent management of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) determining the exact conditions under which software services are provided/consumed, and (3) The need for highly automated negotiation, provision, and monitoring of services running on evolving and adaptable IT infrastructures. To address these needs the project will provide an open source SLA management framework with capabilities for prediction, monitoring and adaptation of software service provision on heterogeneous and distributed service-oriented infrastructure. Key innovative features of this framework will be: (i) the provision of e-contracting, (2) the systematic grounding of SLAs from the business level down to the infrastructure, (3) the exploitation of virtualization technologies at infrastructure level for SLA enforcement, and (4) advanced engineering methodologies for the creation of predictable and manageable services (more details)
  

• Software Services and Systems Network (S-Cube)
  

  Principal investigators: George Spanoudakis (Computing) and Neil Maiden (HCID)
  Co-Investigator: Andrea Zisman (Computing)
  Funding: € 331,290 (Computing) and € 331,290 (HCID) (€ 8.5m for the entire project)
  Funding source: EU (F7, Network of Excellence)
  Duration: 2008 - 2012
  Overview: Network of Excellence in Software services whose mission is to establish a unified, multidisciplinary, vibrant research community enabling Europe to lead the software-services revolution and shape the software service based Internet that will underpin future society.
  

• SERENITY-System Engineering for Security and Dependability

  Principal investigator: George Spanoudakis
  Funding: € 587,232 (City University) - € 7.25m (Total)
  Funding source:EU (F6 Integrated Project)
  Duration:: 2006 - 2009
  Overview: The project is concerned with the development of a framework supporting the automated integration, configuration, monitoring and adaptation of security and dependability mechanisms for AmI ecosystems. Own work focuses on development of mechanisms for monitoring and diagnosis of threats and violations of security requirements and recovery from such violations.

• GREDIA - Grid Enabled Access to Rich Media Content
  

  Principal investigator:Andrea Zisman
  Co-investigator:George Spanoudakis, Bill Karakostas
  Funding: € 330,000 (City University) - € 2.4m (Total)
  Funding source: EU (F6 STREP Project)
  Duration:2006-2009
  Overview: The main goal of GREDIA is to design, implement and validate a reliable platform for the design, development and operational deployment of secure Grid business applications. This platform will support services allowing mobile devices to participate in the Grid applications in a secure way supported by the existence of a dedicated security framework.

• PEPERS-Mobile Peer-to-Peer Security Infrastructure
  

  Principal investigator: George Spanoudakis
  Co-investigator: Andrea Zisman
  Funding: € 323,164 (City University) - € 1.9m (Total)
  Funding source: EU (F6 STREP Project)
  Duration:2006-2008
  Overview: PEPERS is aimed at designing, implementing and validating a reliable platform with high-level support for the design, development and operational deployment of secure mobile peer-to-peer applications.

• SeCSE-Service Centric Systems Engineering
  

  Principal investigators: George Spanoudakis (Computing) and Neil Maiden (HCID)
  Co-Investigator: Andrea Zisman (Computing)
  Funding: € 387,500 (Computing) and € 387,500 (HCID) (€ 8.5m for the entire project)
  Funding source: EU (F6 Intergrated Project)
  Duration: 2004 - 2008
  Overview:Development of methods, tools and techniques for developing and deploying web service based systems. The group focuses on run-time monitoring of service based systems and service discovery driven by architectural models and run-time violations of functional and quality-of-service requirements. It is also looking at mechanisms for context aware run time service discovery and service composition.
  

• NEVIS
  Principal investigator: Andrea Zisman
  Co-Investigator: George Spanoudakis
  Total funding: £ 15,000
  Funding source: CSW Informatics Ltd
  Duration: 2004
  

• Monitoring Security Requirements and Solutions (PhD studenship)
  Principal investigator(s): George Spanoudakis
  PhD Student: Theoharis Tsigritis
  Total funding: £ 40,000
  Funding source: City University
  Duration: 2004 - 2007
  

• Software Traceability for Product Family Systems (PhD studenship)
  Principal investigator(s): Andrea Zisman
  PhD Student: Waraporn Jirapanthong
  Total funding: £ 50,300
  Funding source: Madihol University - Thailand
  Duration: 2002 - 2006
  

• Monitoring requirements for web-services (PhD studenship)
  Principal investigator(s): George Spanoudakis
  PhD Student: Khaled Mahbub
  Total funding: £ 40,000
  Funding source: City University
  Duration: 2002 - 2005
  

• Traceability for agent-oriented systems (PhD studenship)
  Principal investigator(s): Andrea Zisman
  PhD Student: Gilberto Cysneiros
  Total funding: £ 40,000
  Funding source: City University
  Duration: 2002 - 2005
  

• Handling Inconsistencies in Distributed Software Engineering Documents
  Principal investigator(s): Andrea Zisman
  Total funding: £ 64,449
  Funding source: EPSRC
  Duration: 2001-2002
  

• WAICENT Information Bus
  Principal investigator(s): Andrea Zisman
  Total funding: £ 33,000
  Funding source: United Nations - Food and Agricultural Organisation
  Duration: 2002
  

• Requirements Traceability
  Principal investigator(s): George Spanoudakis and Andrea Zisman
  Total funding: £ 5,000
  Funding source: Philips Research Labs - UK
  Duration: 2001
  

• Intereference Management in Object Oriented Software Development (IMOOSD)
  Principal investigator(s): George Spanoudakis
  Total funding: £ 49,000
  Funding source: EPSRC
  Duration: 1999 - 2000
  

• Requirements Engineering Network Of International cooperating Research groups (RENOIR)
  Funded member: George Spanoudakis
  Total funding: £ 5,000
  Funding source: EU Framework IV - Network of Excellence
  Duration: 1996 - 2000
  

A list of selected publications of the members of the groups is maintained. In addition to it the members of the group have their own lists which can be accessed from their web-pages.

Reseach Opportunities

The group welcomes applications from students who want to do research in the areas that are of interest to the academic members of the group. Those interested may initially contact the relevant member of the group or Prof. George Spanoudakis.