Toward Quantum-Safe Software Engineering: A Vision for Post-Quantum Cryptography Migration
Lei Zhang
The quantum threat to cybersecurity has accelerated the standardization of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC). Migrating legacy software to these quantum-safe algorithms is not a simple library swap, but a new software engineering challenge: existing vulnerability detection, refactoring, and testing tools are not designed for PQC's probabilistic behavior, side-channel sensitivity, and complex performance trade-offs. To address these challenges, this paper outlines a vision for a new class of tools and introduces the Automated Quantum-safe Adaptation (AQuA) framework, with a three-pillar agenda for PQC-aware detection, semantic refactoring, and hybrid verification, thereby motivating Quantum-Safe Software Engineering (QSSE) as a distinct research direction.
Benchmarking Prompt Engineering Techniques for Secure Code Generation with GPT Models
Marc Bruni, Fabio Gabrielli, Mohammad Ghafari
et al.
Prompt engineering reduces reasoning mistakes in Large Language Models (LLMs). However, its effectiveness in mitigating vulnerabilities in LLM-generated code remains underexplored. To address this gap, we implemented a benchmark to automatically assess the impact of various prompt engineering strategies on code security. Our benchmark leverages two peer-reviewed prompt datasets and employs static scanners to evaluate code security at scale. We tested multiple prompt engineering techniques on GPT-3.5-turbo, GPT-4o, and GPT-4o-mini. Our results show that for GPT-4o and GPT-4o-mini, a security-focused prompt prefix can reduce the occurrence of security vulnerabilities by up to 56%. Additionally, all tested models demonstrated the ability to detect and repair between 41.9% and 68.7% of vulnerabilities in previously generated code when using iterative prompting techniques. Finally, we introduce a "prompt agent" that demonstrates how the most effective techniques can be applied in real-world development workflows.
Adaptive and Accessible User Interfaces for Seniors Through Model-Driven Engineering
Shavindra Wickramathilaka, John Grundy, Kashumi Madampe
et al.
The use of diverse mobile applications among senior users is becoming increasingly widespread. However, many of these apps contain accessibility problems that result in negative user experiences for seniors. A key reason is that software practitioners often lack the time or resources to address the broad spectrum of age-related accessibility and personalisation needs. As current developer tools and practices encourage one-size-fits-all interfaces with limited potential to address the diversity of senior needs, there is a growing demand for approaches that support the systematic creation of adaptive, accessible app experiences. To this end, we present AdaptForge, a novel model-driven engineering (MDE) approach that enables advanced design-time adaptations of mobile application interfaces and behaviours tailored to the accessibility needs of senior users. AdaptForge uses two domain-specific languages (DSLs) to address age-related accessibility needs. The first model defines users' context-of-use parameters, while the second defines conditional accessibility scenarios and corresponding UI adaptation rules. These rules are interpreted by an MDE workflow to transform an app's original source code into personalised instances. We also report evaluations with professional software developers and senior end-users, demonstrating the feasibility and practical utility of AdaptForge.
On the Role and Impact of GenAI Tools in Software Engineering Education
Qiaolin Qin, Ronnie de Souza Santos, Rodrigo Spinola
Context. The rise of generative AI (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot has transformed how software is learned and written. In software engineering (SE) education, these tools offer new opportunities for support, but also raise concerns about over-reliance, ethical use, and impacts on learning. Objective. This study investigates how undergraduate SE students use GenAI tools, focusing on the benefits, challenges, ethical concerns, and instructional expectations that shape their experiences. Method. We conducted a survey with 130 undergraduate students from two universities. The survey combined structured Likert-scale items and open-ended questions to investigate five dimensions: usage context, perceived benefits, challenges, ethical and instructional perceptions. Results. Students most often use GenAI for incremental learning and advanced implementation, reporting benefits such as brainstorming support and confidence-building. At the same time, they face challenges including unclear rationales and difficulty adapting outputs. Students highlight ethical concerns around fairness and misconduct, and call for clearer instructional guidance. Conclusion. GenAI is reshaping SE education in nuanced ways. Our findings underscore the need for scaffolding, ethical policies, and adaptive instructional strategies to ensure that GenAI supports equitable and effective learning.
Investigating the Use of LLMs for Evidence Briefings Generation in Software Engineering
Mauro Marcelino, Marcos Alves, Bianca Trinkenreich
et al.
[Context] An evidence briefing is a concise and objective transfer medium that can present the main findings of a study to software engineers in the industry. Although practitioners and researchers have deemed Evidence Briefings useful, their production requires manual labor, which may be a significant challenge to their broad adoption. [Goal] The goal of this registered report is to describe an experimental protocol for evaluating LLM-generated evidence briefings for secondary studies in terms of content fidelity, ease of understanding, and usefulness, as perceived by researchers and practitioners, compared to human-made briefings. [Method] We developed an RAG-based LLM tool to generate evidence briefings. We used the tool to automatically generate two evidence briefings that had been manually generated in previous research efforts. We designed a controlled experiment to evaluate how the LLM-generated briefings compare to the human-made ones regarding perceived content fidelity, ease of understanding, and usefulness. [Results] To be reported after the experimental trials. [Conclusion] Depending on the experiment results.
The Kuibyshev Reservoir water level increasing in the context of the climate change
Aleksandra V. Selezneva, Vladimir A. Seleznev
Assessing the change in the hydrological regime of the reservoirs of the
Volga-Kama cascade is very relevant in the context of global warming. Reservoirs are used for domestic and drinking water supply, fisheries and recreation. The largest in the cascade, the Kuibyshev Reservoir, was chosen as the object of study. It is characterized by a seasonal regime of regulation of the Volga water flow. The main objective is to quantify interannual and seasonal changes in the reservoir water level for the period from 1958 to 2024. Relevance.
River, lake, and water-supply engineering (General)
Erosive stability channel factor for Brda River (Poland): A key assessment of the human impact of the catchment changes
Dawid Aleksander Szatten, Oleksandr Obodovskyi, Marta Brzezińska
The stability of river channels results from the impact of spatially diversified natural characteristics of the catchment, which are additionally intensified by the pressure of human activities. The aim of the current study was the overall assessment of the riverbed stability in the Brda River catchment (Poland) in the two periods 1980–1989 and 1991–2018. The study area is characterized by a high discharge regularity, resulting from the river-lake system in the upper part of the catchment, and strong human pressure caused by the presence of hydrotechnical structures in the middle and lower parts of the catchment. The hydrological, sedimentological, and land cover archival data were used in the current study. Also, in the field campaign, the characteristics of the river channel were delimited. Finally, the erosive stability channel factor is proposed, reflecting the level of pressure on the fluvial system from the catchment. The results show that in the first period, there was a tendency to accumulate sediment on the riverbed, resulting in its instability. However, in the second period, the river channel was stable, and erosion and sedimentation processes did not occur. The links between the stability of the bed of the Brda River, and the temporal and area-related pressures made it possible to identify long-term trends in the degradation of the fluvial environment as a result of human activities and to indicate the directions for sustainable sediment management in the catchment.
River protective works. Regulation. Flood control, Harbors and coast protective works. Coastal engineering. Lighthouses
Requirements are All You Need: The Final Frontier for End-User Software Engineering
Diana Robinson, Christian Cabrera, Andrew D. Gordon
et al.
What if end users could own the software development lifecycle from conception to deployment using only requirements expressed in language, images, video or audio? We explore this idea, building on the capabilities that generative Artificial Intelligence brings to software generation and maintenance techniques. How could designing software in this way better serve end users? What are the implications of this process for the future of end-user software engineering and the software development lifecycle? We discuss the research needed to bridge the gap between where we are today and these imagined systems of the future.
STUDY OF HYDROMETEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS IN THE WATERWORKS DESIGN ON THE ABIN RIVER IN THE KRASNODAR TERRITORY
Alexander А. Tkachev, Ruslan A. Karabashev, Viktor A. Nevdakh
et al.
Purpose: to analyze the climatic characteristics of the study area and hydrological characteristics of the studied watercourse, including maximum water discharges in section lines marked along the river bed, as well as maximum water levels of the Abin River, in the volume necessary for a reasonable choice of design solutions for bank protection hydraulic structures.
Materials and methods. The Abin River was studied from 1923 to 1989 at the water gage in Abinsk. Observation data allowed analyzing the regime, level and estimating the discharges. The average annual precipitation is 704 mm, with a peak in December (85 mm) and minimums in April and September (45 mm each). Heavy rains occur in the summer, with a maximum of 171 mm per day. Ice and rime phenomena occur in the area, but they are mostly short-lived. Extreme hydrometeorological phenomena are possible due to the orographic features of the region.
Results. The Abin River is a mountain river with water level fluctuations of up to 8.6 m and the rising large wooden debris during floods. Calculations of maximum discharges and water levels were carried out, the average current velocity reaches 2.68–3.40 m/s, and the maximum depth is 7.54–7.64 m. Channel processes include bed erosion and limited meandering with a stable bank position. The bed erosion depth varies from 0.78 to 1.06 m.
Conclusions. When developing bank protection structures on the Abin River, it is necessary to take into account several important aspects. The structures must withstand significant water discharges (at a speed of 2.68–3.40 m/s and a depth of 7.54–7.64 m BS) and ensure durability during floods. It is necessary to strengthen the foundation and reinforce the slopes using geosynthetics, and provide flexible structures (gabions and Reno mattresses) to adapt to channel changes. It is possible to use technologies that minimize interference with nature, such as anchor systems and the creation of bulkheads. It is recommended to use methods for the redistribution of sediments, including flooded spurs.
Water stagnancy and wastewater input enhance primary productivity in an engineered river system
Siddhartha Sarkar, Sanjeev Kumar
Abstract Under warming conditions and with increasing human perturbations, rivers across the globe are facing drastic shifts in their hydrologic regime, resulting in fragmentation and disconnection from the catchment. Subsequently, a dependency on in situ primary productivity as the source of organic matter increases and warrants detailed investigation of the nature of primary production in urbanized river systems. In this study, primary productivity was estimated at multiple locations along the continuum of an engineered (Sabarmati) and a free flowing (Mahi) river systems in India using 13C tracer incubation method. Significantly enhanced primary productivity in the riverfront (engineered construction along the Sabarmati that holds water supplied by a canal) and polluted downstream of the Sabarmati compared to free flowing Mahi was observed. It was also observed that water stagnancy, temperature, and nutrient availability were the key factors regulating the rates of primary productivity in the urban river system. The study highlights the salient features of riverine primary productivity associated with engineered modifications, which needs to be considered for future river development projects.
Oceanography, River, lake, and water-supply engineering (General)
Assessment of the Water Quality of WWTPs’ Effluents through the Use of Wastewater Quality Index
Ivan Benkov, Stefan Tsakovski, Tony Venelinov
Evaluating the efficiency of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and their impact on receiving surface water bodies is a complex and highly significant task due to its regulatory implications for both environmental and public health. The monitoring of many water quality parameters related to the compliance of treated wastewater with environmental standards has led to the development of a unitless metric, the Wastewater Quality Index (WWQI), which serves as a practical tool for regulatory authorities. The aim of this research is to propose an appropriate WWQI methodology, incorporating a set of water quality indicators and a weighting approach, to evaluate wastewater effluents under operational monitoring. In this study, WWQI was successfully applied to access the operation of 21 WWTPs’ effluents within a single monitoring campaign, outside the mandatory monitoring schemes. The WWQI was computed for physical-chemical parameters including chemical oxygen demand (COD), total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), total suspended solids (TSS), electrical conductivity (EC) and pH, priority substances (Cd, Ni and Pb) and a specific contaminant (Cr) using the weighted approach in the WWQI calculation, based on equal weighting, expert judgement and PCA weighing using factor loadings. The three approaches give similar results for the calculated WWQI. The expert judgment approach is more suitable for evaluating WWTP performance during a single monitoring campaign due to its simplicity compared to the PCA-based approach and its ability to prioritize specific water quality parameters over an equal weightage method.
Technology, Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
Research on Total Water Consumption Management under Rigid Constraint of Water Resources in Southern China with Abundant Water Resources —— A Case Study of Pearl River Basin
LIU Yanju, YANG Ruixiang
Taking water resources as the maximum rigid constraint has become an inevitable requirement for promoting unified management of water resources and high-quality development of the economy and society in the new situation.The core meaning of the maximum rigid constraint of water resources is to use water resources as their capacity permits.Total water consumption control management is the core standard to implement the rigid constraint of water resources.Based on the characteristics of water resources in the Pearl River Basin with better natural water resources conditions,this study focuses on solving the existing practical problems in the implementation of the rigid constraint system of water resources in the Pearl River Basin,such as weak foundation,poor system and mechanism,and imperfect management of total water consumption indicators.The study also puts forward suggestions on total water consumption management indicators of the basin based on available water resources and the sum of water transferred in and out.The scope of application and the preconditions for dynamic adjustment of total water consumption management indicators are clarified,and the indicator adjustment mode is established.It provides support for strengthening the management of total water consumption in the Pearl River Basin under the background of the rigid constraint of water resources,vitalizes the total water consumption indicators,and improves utilization efficiency.
River, lake, and water-supply engineering (General)
A Method of Sequential Log-Convex Programming for Engineering Design
Cody Karcher, Robert Haimes
A method of Sequential Log-Convex Programming (SLCP) is constructed that exploits the log-convex structure present in many engineering design problems. The mathematical structure of Geometric Programming (GP) is combined with the ability of Sequential Quadratic Program (SQP) to accommodate a wide range of objective and constraint functions, resulting in a practical algorithm that can be adopted with little to no modification of existing design practices. Three test problems are considered to demonstrate the SLCP algorithm, comparing it with SQP and the modified Logspace Sequential Quadratic Programming (LSQP). In these cases, SLCP shows up to a 77% reduction in number of iterations compared to SQP, and an 11% reduction compared to LSQP. The airfoil analysis code XFOIL is integrated into one of the case studies to show how SLCP can be used to evolve the fidelity of design problems that have initially been modeled as GP compatible. Finally, a methodology for design based on GP and SLCP is briefly discussed.
Improving transferability between different engineering stages in the development of automated material flow modules
Daniel Regulin, Thomas Aicher, Birgit Vogel-Heuser
For improving flexibility and robustness of the engineering of automated production systems (aPS) in case of extending, reducing or modifying parts, several approaches propose an encapsulation and clustering of related functions, e.g. from the electrical, mechanical or software engineering, based on a modular architecture. Considering the development of these modules, there are different stages, e.g. module planning or functional engineering, which have to be completed. A reference model that addresses the different stages for the engineering of aPS is proposed by AutomationML. Due to these different stages and the integration of several engineering disciplines, e.g. mechanical, electrical/electronic or software engineering, information not limited to one discipline are stored redundantly increasing the effort to transfer information and the risk of inconsistency. Although, data formats for the storage and exchange of plant engineering information exist, e.g. AutomationML, fixed domain specific structures and relations of the information, e.g. for automated material flow systems (aMFS), are missing. This paper presents the integration of a meta model into the development of modules for aMFS to improve the transferability and consistency of information between the different engineering stages and the increasing level of detail from the coarse-grained plant planning to the fine-grained functional engineering.
Exploration and Practice of Annual Safety Report Regulation for Long-Distance Water Diversion Projects
HU Jiang, MA Fuheng, SHENG Jinbao
et al.
Long-distance water diversion projects are important strategic infrastructure to optimize the patterns of water resource allocation,which are characterized by long distances,many hydraulic structures,complex geological and environmental conditions,and high maintenance requirements.The long-term safe operation of these projects has been highly concerned.The annual safety report of these projects is an effective means to grasp the engineering status in a timely and dynamic manner.On the basis of the characteristics of these projects and the discussion on the existing basis and compilation principles of annual safety reports,the organization and implementation of the main work in annual reports,such as safety inspection,safety detection,and safety assessment,are explored,and the regulation of an annual safety report is proposed.According to the practice of the first annual safety report on the central route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project,the key contents of the annual safety report,including safety inspection,safety detection,and safety monitoring,as well as operational management contents such as dispatching operation,maintenance,safety production,and emergency management are briefly introduced.Finally,the experience,understanding,and difficulty of annual safety report compilation are summarized.The successful application of the annual safety report in the central route project can provide a reference for similar projects.
River, lake, and water-supply engineering (General)
JEST: N+1-version Differential Testing of Both JavaScript Engines and Specification
Jihyeok Park, Seungmin An, Dongjun Youn
et al.
Modern programming follows the continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD) approach rather than the traditional waterfall model. Even the development of modern programming languages uses the CI/CD approach to swiftly provide new language features and to adapt to new development environments. Unlike in the conventional approach, in the modern CI/CD approach, a language specification is no more the oracle of the language semantics because both the specification and its implementations can co-evolve. In this setting, both the specification and implementations may have bugs, and guaranteeing their correctness is non-trivial. In this paper, we propose a novel N+1-version differential testing to resolve the problem. Unlike the traditional differential testing, our approach consists of three steps: 1) to automatically synthesize programs guided by the syntax and semantics from a given language specification, 2) to generate conformance tests by injecting assertions to the synthesized programs to check their final program states, 3) to detect bugs in the specification and implementations via executing the conformance tests on multiple implementations, and 4) to localize bugs on the specification using statistical information. We actualize our approach for the JavaScript programming language via JEST, which performs N+1-version differential testing for modern JavaScript engines and ECMAScript, the language specification describing the syntax and semantics of JavaScript in a natural language. We evaluated JEST with four JavaScript engines that support all modern JavaScript language features and the latest version of ECMAScript (ES11, 2020). JEST automatically synthesized 1,700 programs that covered 97.78% of syntax and 87.70% of semantics from ES11. Using the assertion-injection, it detected 44 engine bugs in four engines and 27 specification bugs in ES11.
Keep Your Stakeholders Engaged: Interactive Vision Videos in Requirements Engineering
Lukas Nagel, Oliver Karras
One of the most important issues in requirements engineering (RE) is the alignment of stakeholders' mental models. Making sure that all stakeholders share the same vision of a changing system is crucial to the success of any project. Misaligned mental models of stakeholders can lead to conflicting requirements. A promising approach to this problem is the use of video showing a system vision, so-called vision videos, which help stakeholders to disclose, discuss, and align their mental models of the future system. However, videos have the drawback of allowing viewers to adopt a passive role, as has been shown in research on e-learning. In this role, viewers tend to be inactive, unfocused and bored while watching a video. In this paper, we learn and adopt findings from scientific literature in the field of e-learning on how to mitigate this passive role while watching vision videos in requirements engineering. In this way, we developed concepts that incorporate interactive elements into vision videos to help viewers stay focused. These elements include questions that are asked during the video and ways for viewers to decide what happens next in the video. In a preliminary evaluation with twelve participants, we found statistically significant differences when comparing the interactive vision videos with their traditional form. Using an interactive vision videos, viewers are noticeably more engaged and gather more information on the shown system.
On the Future of Cloud Engineering
David Bermbach, Abhishek Chandra, Chandra Krintz
et al.
Ever since the commercial offerings of the Cloud started appearing in 2006, the landscape of cloud computing has been undergoing remarkable changes with the emergence of many different types of service offerings, developer productivity enhancement tools, and new application classes as well as the manifestation of cloud functionality closer to the user at the edge. The notion of utility computing, however, has remained constant throughout its evolution, which means that cloud users always seek to save costs of leasing cloud resources while maximizing their use. On the other hand, cloud providers try to maximize their profits while assuring service-level objectives of the cloud-hosted applications and keeping operational costs low. All these outcomes require systematic and sound cloud engineering principles. The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of cloud engineering, survey the landscape of best practices in cloud engineering and its evolution, discuss many of the existing cloud engineering advances, and identify both the inherent technical challenges and research opportunities for the future of cloud computing in general and cloud engineering in particular.
Bureaucratising Co-production: Institutional Adaptation of Irrigation Associations in Taiwan
Wai-Fung Lam, Ching-Ping Tang, Shih-Ko Tang
In 2020, Taiwan’s 17 irrigation associations were bureaucratised to become management offices of the Irrigation Agency under the government’s Council of Agriculture. This change marked the end of the parastatal mode of irrigation management that has in past decades played an important role in fostering Taiwan’s agricultural and economic development. As these parastatals have always been hailed by the international water research community as exemplars of co-production and state-community synergy, the change is baffling. While irrigation management in many places around the world has been moving towards a higher degree of decentralisation and self-governance, Taiwan seems to be moving in the opposite direction. How can we make sense of this change? What are the driving forces behind it? Does the bureaucratisation of the irrigation associations signify a failure of
the co-production model? By tracing the evolution of irrigation institutions in Taiwan, this study examines the dynamic of institutional change as a response to the island’s changing political economy. The study shows that changes in the macropolitical-economic context prompted the Taiwanese government to reconsider two
imperatives that underlie the institutional design of irrigation associations: robustness trade-offs and the modus operandi of co-production. The bureaucratisation of irrigation associations was an institutional manifestation of the
adjustment of the two imperatives in adapting to the changing political economy.
Quantitative Analysis of Potamogeton Crispus in Dongping Lake Based on Remote Sensing
WU Chunhui, LIU Shufen, SANG Yanyan
et al.
Under the background of rapid urbanization,rapid economic development and industrialization level improvement,the lake water quality is deteriorating,with increasingly serious eutrophication.So it is of great significance to strengthen the monitoring and control of lake water quality.Taking Dongping Lake as the research object,this paper quantitatively analyzes the dynamic change of Potamogeton crispus in Dongping Lake by remote sensing method,with purpose to reveal the seasonal biomass dynamics of Potamogeton crispus in Dongping Lake,clarify its impact on the total phosphorus of Dongping Lake,and provide scientific support for water quality control,especially total phosphorus control.The results show that:The vegetation in the lake water in 2018 was less than that in 2017 by visual interpretation,and showed a decline trend in concentric way from the center of the lake,which indicated that the local government and environmental protection departments has spared no efforts in governance;The dry matters in 2018 were less than those in 2017.It is a great contribution to total phosphorus of lake water by the death of Potamogeton crispus.
River, lake, and water-supply engineering (General)