In the rapid journey of industrialization in the 20th century, software has become more and more crucial as enabler to daily operational values in life. From daily routines to important national decisions, software has been the epitome of global essentiality. While creating new markets, opportunities, directions and aspirations for a more reliable, flexible and robust society, the exploration for perfection and scrutiny has been more feasible with the empowerment of software utilization. Despite its advancement, software development will from time to time disappoint new expectations as society adapts to frequent changes in technology. This reflects the issues of efficiency, reliability, security and robustness of software methodologies, tools and techniques in present time that does not go hand in hand with the rapidly evolving market.

This book explores new trends and theories that highlight the direction and development of software methodologies, tools and techniques, which we hope will provide knowledgeable insights into transforming the role of software sciences within the expansion of global industrialization.

Through intellectual discourses of state-of-the-art research practices, newly developed techniques, enhanced methodologies, software related solutions and recently developed tools, more opportunities were offered conforming current intellectual status plus resolution to future directions.

The book aims to capture the essence of a new state of the art in software science and its supporting technology, and to identify the challenges that such a technology will have to master. It contains extensively reviewed papers presented at the 18th International Conference on New Trends in Intelligent Software Methodology Tools, and Techniques, (SoMeT_19) held in Kuching, Malaysia with the collaboration of IEEE Malaysia Computer Chapter, Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology (MJIIT), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and Iwate Prefectural University, from September 23–25, 2019. (https://ieeecomputer.my/somet2019/).

This round of SoMeT_19 is celebrating the 18th anniversary. SoMeT [Previous related events that contributed to this publication are: SoMeT_02 (the Sorbonne, Paris, 2002); SoMeT_03 (Stockholm, Sweden, 2003); SoMeT_04 (Leipzig, Germany, 2004); SoMeT_05 (Tokyo, Japan, 2005); SoMeT_06 (Quebec, Canada, 2006); SoMeT_07 (Rome, Italy, 2007); SoMeT_08 (Sharjah, UAE, 2008); SoMeT_09 (Prague, Czech Republic, 2009); SoMeT_10 (Yokohama, Japan, 2010), and SoMeT_11 (Saint Petersburg, Russia), SoMeT_12 (Genoa, Italy), SoMeT_13 (Budapest, Hungary), SoMeT_14(Langkawi, Malaysia), SoMeT_15 (Naples, Italy), SoMeT_16 (Larnaca, Cyprus), SoMeT_17 (Kitakyushu, Japan), SoMeT_18 (Granada, Spain).] conference series is ranked as B+ among other high-ranking Computer Science conferences worldwide.

This conference brought together researchers and practitioners to share their original research results and practical development experience in software science and related new technologies. This volume contributes to the conference and the SoMeT series of which it forms a part, by providing an opportunity for exchanging ideas and experiences in the field of software technology; opening up new avenues for software development, methodologies, tools, and techniques, especially with regard to intelligent software by applying artificial intelligence techniques in software development, and tackling human interaction in the development process for a better high-level interface. The emphasis has been placed on human-centric software methodologies, end-user development techniques, and emotional reasoning, for an optimally harmonized performance between the design tool and the user.

Intelligence in software systems resembles the need to apply machine learning methods and data mining techniques to software design for high level systems applications in decision support system, data streaming, health care prediction, and other data driven systems.

A major goal of this work was to assemble the work of scholars from the international research community to discuss and share research experiences of new software methodologies and techniques. One of the important issues addressed is the handling of cognitive issues in software development to adapt it to the user’s mental state. Tools and techniques related to this aspect form part of the contribution of this book. Another subject raised at the conference was intelligent software design in software ontology and conceptual software design in practical human-centric information system application.

The book also investigates other comparable theories and practices in software science, including emerging technologies, from their computational foundations in terms of models, methodologies, and tools. This is essential for a comprehensive overview of information systems and research projects, and to assess their practical impact on real-world software problems. This represents another milestone in mastering the new challenges of software and its promising technology, addressed by the SoMeT conferences, and provides the reader with new insights, inspiration and concrete material to further the study of this new technology.

The book is a collection of carefully selected refereed papers by the reviewing committee, covering (but not limited to):

1. unmapped: label 1.

   Requirement engineering, especially for high-assurance systems, and requirement elicitation.

2. unmapped: label 2.

   Software methodologies, and tools for robust, reliable, non-fragile software design.

3. unmapped: label 3.

   Software development techniques and legacy systems.

4. unmapped: label 4.

   Automatic software generation versus reuse, and legacy systems.

5. unmapped: label 5.

   Software quality and process assessment for business enterprise.

6. unmapped: label 6.

   Intelligent software systems design, and software evolution techniques.

7. unmapped: label 7.

   Agile software and lean methods.

8. unmapped: label 8.

   Software optimization and formal methods for software design.

9. unmapped: label 9.

   Static, dynamic analysis on software performance model, software maintenance.

10. unmapped: label 10.

    Software security tools and techniques, and related software engineering models.

11. unmapped: label 11.

    Formal techniques for software representation, software testing and validation.

12. unmapped: label 12.

    Software reliability, and software diagnosis systems.

13. unmapped: label 13.

    Mobile code security tools and techniques.

14. unmapped: label 14.

    End-user programming environment, user-centered adoption-centric reengineering techniques.

15. unmapped: label 15.

    Ontology, cognitive models and philosophical aspects on software design.

16. unmapped: label 16.

    Medical informatics, software methods and application for biomedicine.

17. unmapped: label 17.

    Artificial intelligence techniques on software engineering.

18. unmapped: label 18.

    Software design through interaction, and precognitive software techniques for interactive software entertainment applications.

19. unmapped: label 19.

    Creativity and art in software design principles.

20. unmapped: label 20.

    Axiomatic based principles on software design.

21. unmapped: label 21.

    Model driven development (DVD), code-centric to model-centric software engineering.

22. unmapped: label 22.

    Software methods for medical informatics, bioinformatics, and bioinformatics.

23. unmapped: label 23.

    Emergency management informatics, software methods for supporting civil protection, first response and disaster recovery.

24. unmapped: label 24.

    Software methods for decision support systems and recommender systems.

We have received high quality submissions and from among these we have selected 56 articles to be published in this book. Referees in the program committee have carefully reviewed all the submissions, and based on technical soundness, relevance, originality, significance, and clarity, these 56 papers were selected. They were then revised based on the review reports before being accepted by the SoMeT_19 international reviewing committee. It is worth stating that there were three to four reviewers for each paper published in this book. The book is categorized into 5 Chapters based on the following themes:

CHAPTER 1 Intelligent Software Systems Design and Techniques in Software Engineering

CHAPTER 2 Machine Learning Techniques for Software Systems

CHAPTER 3 Requirements Engineering, Software Design and Development Techniques

CHAPTER 4 Software Methodologies, Tools and Techniques for Industry

CHAPTER 5 Knowledge Science and Intelligent Computing

This book is the result of a collective effort from many industrial partners and colleagues throughout the world. We especially would like to acknowledge our gratitude to the IEEE Malaysia Computer Chapter, Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Iwate Prefectural University, and all authors who have contributed their invaluable support to this work. We also thank the SoMeT_19 keynote speakers: Professor Volker Gruhn, Software Technology Universitat Duisburg-Essen, Germany and Professor Dr. Enrique Herrera-Viedma, Vice president of Research and Knowledge Transfer, University of Granada, Spain. Most especially, we thank the reviewing committee and all those who participated in the rigorous reviewing process and the lively discussion and evaluation meetings which led to the selected papers that appear in this book. Last and not least, we would like to thank the Microsoft Conference Management Tool team for their expert guidance on the use of the Microsoft CMT System as a conference-support tool during all the phases of SoMeT_19.

Hamido Fujita

Ali Selamat