Preface RE4SuSy: 7th International Workshop on
 Requirements Engineering for Sustainable Systems
                        Ruzanna Chitchyan                                                    Colin C. Venters
                     University of Bristol                                              University of Huddersfield
                         Bristol, UK                                                        Huddersfield, UK
                r.chitchyan@bristol.ac.uk                                               c.venters@hud.ac.uk



   Abstract—The RE4SuSy workshop series has established a            Some, for instance, insist that only requirements that support
strong and growing research community around the different           environmental needs are ”sustainability requirements”, others
aspects of sustainability and how to support them in requirements    consider sustainability to be inclusive of social, individual,
engineering.
   Since requirements define how and what a software will do,
                                                                     economic, and technical domains as well. So how then does
we maintain that requirements engineering is the key point           a requirement becomes a ”sustainability requirement? A dis-
in software engineering through which sustainability can be          cussion towards addressing this question was initiated at the
fostered. Thus, the RE4SuSy workshop series is concerned with        last year’s edition of the workshop, where a clear progress
research on techniques, tools, and processes for sustainability      was made towards identification of some characteristics of
through requirements engineering.
                                                                     sustainability requirements. The the key task of this edition
   Last year the workshop initiated an effort to start converging
the RE for sustainability community to a common set of funda-        of the workshop is to elicit a common ground amongst the
mentals. This edition of the RE4SuSy workshop will build on the      workshop participants in answering this question.
the initial convergence effort, helping to clarify what character-      The objective of the workshop is to establish a community
istics a requirement should posses, or what constraints should it    of researchers and practitioners interested in collaborating on
meet in order to be called a “sustainability requirement”.           the topic of sustainability in requirements engineering. This
   RE4SuSy is an interactive workshop: the contributors and
prospective participants will engage well before the workshop
                                                                     community will expand and build on the work already initiated
date through on-line collaborative writing, discussion, and peer     in the past editions of this workshop, such as the research
feedback. The workshop aims to foster community growth by            agendas and the the Karlskrona Manifesto on Sustainability
supporting new collaborations, holding preliminary case studies,     Design. The workshop also aims to establish a common ground
discussions, and birds-of-a-feather group work.                      on the key topics of RE for Sustainability. These objective shall
   Software is a main driver for change in business and              be supported in the workshop through the following actions:
society, in changing life styles as well as business practices.         • Call for submission of key topics and definitions for
Since requirements are the starting point for defining soft-              Requirements Engineering in Sustainability (with the
ware, requirements engineering is the key point in software               ”sustainability requirement characteristics” provided as
engineering through which sustainability can be fostered.                 an example topic by the organisers of the workshop);
   This workshop aims to provide an interactive stage for               • Working sessions to discuss the submitted topics and
researchers and practitioners to share and exchange their                 apply the emerging ideas to a demonstrator case study;
latest work, to collaboratively work on expanding the body              • Provision of a platform for researchers and practitioners
of knowledge in RE for sustainable systems, and to jump                   to present their current work and trigger discussion;
start new collaborations through the live creation of teams that        • Continued collaboration on the previously initiated topics
commit to work together on concrete topics and in-workshop                (e.g., Karlskrona Manifesto on Sustainability Design);
case studies and experiments.                                           • Support for group work and discussion on new topics;
   In addition, this year we will start on the work of consensus        • Kick start new collaborations between the workshop
building around the key notions of RE for sustainability .                participants
Last year we initiated a discussion and arrived to a set                • Publication of a white paper on the common fundamen-
of characteristics of a sustainability requirement. The focus             tals of RE for Sustainability;
of this year’s workshop will be to continue this discussion             • Dissemination of the workshop ideas and results at the
in order to integrate and converge to a common notion of                  main conference.
sustainability requirement.                                          We hope you enjoy the workshop and its proceedings.
   For the last few years, researchers have been exploring the
notion of “sustainability requirements”, and how to support
the elicitation, documentation, and conflict resolution of such
requirements. Yet, there still is no common understanding as to
what makes a requirement into a ”sustainability requirement”.