Social computing networks: a new paradigm for engineering self-adaptive pervasive software systems

Software systems are increasingly permeating a variety of domains including medical, industrial automation, and emergency response. The advances in portable and embedded computing devices and the recent advances in wireless network connectivity have paved the way for the proliferation of smart spaces in such domains. At the same time, the emergence of service-oriented technology (e.g., web services [10]) and interoperability standards (e.g., WSDL [11], UDDI [5]) has made it possible to develop pervasive software systems intended for execution in smart spaces that were not even conceivable a few years back.