A Framework of Software Architecture Principles for Sustainability-driven Design and Measurement

Aviation connects our world by efficiently and rapidly moving people, opening new economic opportunities and transporting food and goods globally. But the notable growth of air travel in recent years has led to increasingly crowded airspace. According to the 2019 European Aviation Environment Report, aviation is responsible for about 3% of global CO2 emissions, which translates into a big ecological impact. It is imperative to steer the aviation industry towards optimizing resources, reducing costs, improving decision-making and increasing systems’ resilience to unexpected events. In this work, we study the sustainability impact of software architecture principles at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. To this aim, we create a framework that relates architecture principles with sustainability concerns, with the aim of seeking the right balance toward a positive impact on the sustainable development of the organization and its services. We combine techniques like OGSM and Decision Maps to extend the current architecture principles, and elicit Key Performance Indicators from current industrial practice. The resulting framework is the first step towards adopting sustainability in architecting and laying the foundation to monitor the effectiveness of the implemented architecture principles on the target sustainability goals of the organization.