Creating sustainable information technology (IT) software architectures is a complex task, which is sometimes left to the inspiration of the architect. Although several patterns exist (for example, service oriented, pipes and filters, and so on), building components of complex systems usually requires a disciplined methodology that can be exploited to share the work with a (potentially distributed) team.
Several architectural frameworks have been proposed; for example, TOGAF inspired the European Union (EU) commission in the creation of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) (see https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/eif_en) and its architectures, the European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA) (see https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/solutions/eira_en), or Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) aimed to provide methodologies to help software architects in the design phase. It is worth noticing that almost all of those frameworks promote interoperability as a key feature to achieve sustainability by avoiding effects such as the vendor lock-in. A necessary condition to achieve interoperability is an adherence to open standards, but it is not sufficient: only standards used and selected with specific criteria will reach the goal.
The European Commission, with mandate M/490, started the process of creating an architectural model for a particular energy system, the smart grid. The resulting work is the smart grid architecture model (SGAM), which is used as a reference for building interoperable systems of systems that will compose (and are composing) the electricity network of today.
In particular, the book tackles the aspect of evaluating the combined application of SGAM and the IEC 62559-2 series (that provides a formalized process to describe use cases) in various domains, such as eHealth, electric mobility, data exchange among maritime actors, smart cities, and Industry 4.0. The book presents both topics in detail (SGAM and the use case templates) and outlines a methodology for the application of the model. The book positions itself as a survey of EU projects and is useful and recommended reading for both experts and novices in the SGAM field.
