Specification Completion for Sustainable Software Development via Sustainability-Driven Mining

In an era where digital transformation intersects with environmental sustainability, the software development industry must integrate practices that minimize ecological impacts. This paper proposes a comprehensive framework for specification completion through specification mining, aimed at embedding sustainability into software development processes. Utilizing an Extended Abstraction Refinement Model (EARM), we enhance the DevOps lifecycle by mapping observed behavior to development artifacts, ensuring sustainability metrics are accessible and actionable for stakeholders such as requirements engineers, software architects, and developers. Our approach leverages emergent behavior analysis to identify sustainability impacts that manifest during runtime, enabling targeted, energy-efficient interventions without incurring the rebound effect of exhaustive evaluations. By incorporating natural language processing (NLP) techniques for automated specification mapping, the framework refines software models iteratively, integrating real-world sustainability insights. This methodology supports the reduction of the carbon footprint in software products while preserving performance and quality, contributing to the alignment of software engineering with global sustainability objectives.