Architectural Design of Sensor based Environmental Information Systems for Maintainability

The achievement of software quality attributes contributes to the success of any system. As a matter of fact, Maintainability is one of the software quality attributes that plays a major role in attaining system quality. However, it is a time-consuming and expensive phase of system development life cycle. Sensor based environmental information systems have a long operational lifetime. For these reasons, it is very important for sensor based environmental information systems to possess the maintainability quality attribute in order to remain useful during their lifetime. However, the development process of such systems did not realize explicitly the maintainability requirements to sustain the operation of such systems. The fulfillment of quality attributes of the system has been increasing realized as a significant role of software architecture. This work extends the architecture of sensor based environmental information systems for maintainability, using road traffic control system as a case of study. Maintainability is assessed through the use of change scenarios. Architectural design decisions are applied in redesigning the architecture to improve maintainability.