Sustainable Software Engineering

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 mainly focuses on the first, also known as Green Software Engineering. On top of that, we also cover fundamental aspects of social and individual sustainability of software projects.   
  
Software Engineering (SE) has long addressed sustainability by narrowing it down to economic and technical sustainability. However, our society is facing major sustainability challenges that can no longer be overlooked by software engineers and computer scientists. It is estimated that, by 2040, the ICT sector will contribute to 14% of the global carbon footprint. Through the rise in digitalization, software also defines societal processes and trust more than ever before. Hence, the environmental, social, and individual perspectives ought to be part of the equation when it comes to design, build, and release software systems. The problem is far from simple and we need expert computer scientists to bring sustainability into the core values of the next generation of tech-leading organisations.