Social impact of smart environments: software engineering perspectives and challenges

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

This article examines the impact of smart environments on society from a software engineering design perspective. Smart environments create significant design challenges due to their scalability, interconnectedness, and adaptivity of devices. Software engineering and existing standards typically address technical issues, while ethical and social issues have been neglected. This work argues that changing regulatory requirements shifts the responsibility for outcomes to the software engineering team, and therefore the definition of adequate guidelines is needed. These guidelines include consideration of ethical issues, harmonized ethically informed standards, principles that address compliance risks, and analyses of social impact. Our starting point is the seven harmonized standards defined by the European GDPR. Based on the existing literature and additional analyses, we identify ten key ethical issues, nine compliance risks, and twelve analyses of societal impact. These standards, issues, risks, and analyses make a starting point for the development of formal guidelines applicable to socially aware smart environment design.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2022 IEEE 46th Annual Computers, Software, and Applications Conference (COMPSAC)
PublisherIEEE
Pages1592-1597
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781665488105
ISBN (Print)9781665488112
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 10 Aug 2022
Event Annual Computers, Software, and Applications Conference - Los Alamitos, United States
Duration: 27 Jun 20221 Jul 2022
Conference number: 46th

Conference

Conference Annual Computers, Software, and Applications Conference
Abbreviated titleCOMPSAC
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityLos Alamitos
Period27/06/221/07/22

Keywords

  • engineering ethics
  • ethics of technology
  • health ethics
  • international ethics guidelines
  • internet of things
  • machine ethics
  • research ethics
  • smart home

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