At the peak of global industrialization, technology and innovation take on new definitions and perspectives daily. The significance of software methodologies, tools and techniques has become more and more crucial, proving its importance in determining human lives each day. Knowledge innovation is key to the revolution of technological advancement, and all modernization is vitally dependent on it. From household decisions to international decisions, knowledge innovation is the only quantifiable essential for determining a well-defined reconstruction of society for the better. While knowledge innovation can deliver both positive and negative impacts, the common goal of the information and communication technology domain has always been that of unlimited opportunities, fruitful directions, robust models and flexible information mitigation. Knowledge innovation comes with expectations which parallel the ever-changing developments in software advancement. With fluctuating requirements and fast-paced trends, knowledge innovation remains key for the development of new ideas and accomplishments in intelligent software methodologies, tools and techniques.

This book is an exploration of new trends and theories that highlight the direction and development of intelligent software methodologies, tools and techniques, and we hope it will bring insight into the transformative role of software sciences within the growth of knowledge innovation. It features thorough intellectual discourses on state-of-the-art research practices, newly developed techniques, enhanced methodologies, software related solutions and recently developed tools, as well as exploring opportunities conforming to current intellectual status and resolutions with regard to future direction.

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 19th International Conference on New Trends in Intelligent Software Methodology Tools, and Techniques, (SoMeT20) held in Kitakyushu, Japan with the collaboration of Iwate Prefectural University, Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Kitakyushu City and National Institute of Information and Communications Technology from September 22–24, 2020 (https://jsasaki3.wixsite.com/somet2020/). This round of SoMeT20 is celebrating the 19th 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, 2011), SoMeT_12 (Genoa, Italy, 2012), SoMeT_13 (Budapest, Hungary, 2013), SoMeT_14(Langkawi, Malaysia, 2014), SoMeT_15 (Naples, Italy, 2015), SoMeT_16 (Larnaca, Cyprus, 2016), SoMeT_17 (Kitakyushu, Japan, 2017), SoMeT_18 (Granada, Spain, 2018), SoMeT_19 (Kuching, Malaysia, 2019).) conference series is ranked as B+ rank 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 participates in 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 and 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 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.

A major goal of this volume was to assemble the work of scholars from the international research community and 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 to 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 applications.

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 papers, refereed by the reviewing committee, which cover (but are not limited to):

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

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

3. Software developments techniques and legacy systems.

4. Automatic software generation versus reuse, and legacy systems.

5. Software quality and process assessment for business enterprise.

6. Intelligent software systems design, and software evolution techniques.

7. Agile software and Lean Methods.

8. Software optimization and formal methods for software design.

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

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

11. Formal techniques for software representation, software testing and validation.

12. Software reliability, and software diagnosis systems.

13. Mobile code security tools and techniques.

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

15. Ontology, cognitive models and philosophical aspects on software design.

16. Medical Informatics, software methods and application for biomedicine.

17. Artificial Intelligence techniques for software engineering.

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

19. Creativity and art in software design principles.

20. Axiomatic based principles on software design.

21. Model Driven Development (DVD), code centric to model centric software engineering. 22. Software methods for medical informatics and bioinformatics.

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

24. Software methods for decision support systems and recommender systems.

We have received high-quality submissions, and from those we have selected the 40 best-quality revised articles for publication. Referees from the program committee have carefully reviewed all these submissions, and these 40 papers were selected on the basis of technical soundness, relevance, originality, significance, and clarity. They were then revised on the basis of the review reports before being selected by the SoMeT20 international reviewing committee. It is worth stating that there were three or four reviewers for each paper published in this book.

The book is divided into 5 chapters based on paper topics as follows:

CHAPTER 1. Artificial Intelligence Techniques on Software Engineering, and Requirement Engineering

CHAPTER 2. Software Methods for Informatics, Medical Informatics and Biomedicine Applications

CHAPTER 3. Applied Software Tools, Techniques and Related Software Engineering Models

CHAPTER 4. Intelligent Software Systems Design, Software Quality, Software Evolution and Validation Techniques

CHAPTER 5. Knowledge Science and Intelligent Computing

This book is the result of a collective effort from many academic and industrial partners and colleagues throughout the world. In particular we would like to acknowledge our gratitude to Iwate Prefectural University, Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Kitakyushu City, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, and all authors who have contributed their invaluable support to this work. We also appreciate the SoMeT20 keynote speaker: 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 selection of the papers which appear in this book. Last but not least, we would also 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 20.

The editors