Introduction to the thematic issue

Abstract

This Thematic Issue focuses on software engineer-ing perspectives on the design, the use and the evalu-ation of Smart Applications for Ambient Intelligence.It congregates works showing the latest advance-ments in simulated smart environments as well assuccessful deployments in the real world, with con-tributions from revised and extended papers from theISAmI’11 (International Symposium on AmbientIntelligence) event held at the University of Sala-manca, Spain in April, 2011.Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is recognized as an es-tablished research field where smart and sensitivedevices are used as proactive tools to assist peoplewith their day-to-day activities, making everyone’slife more comfortable. The application of softwareengineering best practices can strengthen the success-ful development of systems that offer context-awaresuggestions or automate tasks according to the cur-rent situation of their users.The papers in this Thematic Issue highlight vari-ous best practices for engineering intelligent softwarearchitectures, with development methodologies forbuilding intelligent applications and case studies onsoftware requirements and testing of smart behavior