Towards a Taxonomy of Sustainability Requirements for Software Design

2025-10-10

AI Summary

Existing research on software sustainability requirements remains fragmented, focusing narrowly on isolated dimensions (e.g., environmental or economic) or specific domains, and lacks a unified, four-dimensional classification framework encompassing environmental, social, technical, and economic aspects—hindering systematic trade-off analysis during early design. To address this, we conduct a systematic literature review (SLR), integrating qualitative analysis and taxonomy construction. We propose the first four-dimensional, synergistic sustainability requirements classification framework, formally defining categories, specifying actionable metrics for each, and constructing a cross-dimensional impact association matrix to identify synergies and conflicts. The resulting reusable, structured reference framework provides both theoretical foundations and practical guidance to support evidence-based, sustainability-aware software design decisions for practitioners and researchers.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Software Engineering
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Satisfiability Modulo Theories
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Sustainability and carbon-aware systems for Web, mobile, and WoT
• Responsible Web: Sustainability and climate impact of web technologies
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics

Abstract

Software systems are a significant contributor to global sustainability concerns, demanding that environmental, social, technical, and economic factors be systematically addressed from the initial requirements engineering phase. Although existing research provides various sustainability requirements (SRs), these contributions are often fragmented, specific to certain dimensions, or limited to particular application domains, resulting in a critical lack of a unified, comprehensive taxonomy for the software engineering community. To address this gap, this research conducts a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) to extract and organize sustainability requirements from the state-of-the-art. The primary contribution is a comprehensive taxonomy of SRs across the four dimensions of sustainability (environmental, technical, social, and economic). For each identified category, we provide clear definitions, associated metrics, and measures. Furthermore, we depict a correlation matrix that projects the positive and negative influences (synergies and conflicts) among categories across different dimensions. This systematized reference assists both software developers and researchers in effectively formulating, managing, and reconciling trade-offs within sustainable software development.

Problem

• Developing a unified taxonomy for software sustainability requirements
• Addressing fragmented sustainability requirements across multiple dimensions
• Identifying interrelationships between sustainability requirement categories

Innovation

• Systematic Literature Review extracts sustainability requirements
• Taxonomy organizes requirements across four sustainability dimensions
• Correlation matrix depicts synergies and conflicts among categories