Building a domain model for mobile collaborative systems: Towards a software product line

Abstract

Software Product Lines are a recent approach to the software reuse problem: they allow implementing a set of applications that share common features. The mass use and increased availability of mobile computing devices has allowed for people to use their devices to work while on the move, including emergency response workers. Several initiatives propose software reuse for collaborative systems, e.g. components, architectures, toolkits and frameworks. We propose building a software product line for mobile collaboration in the emergency management domain, as there is a need for different products depending on user types, fire company needs, and evolving requirements. This paper proposes a domain model as the first step towards building a software product line. The domain model summarizes findings in related work and several years of experience working in the emergency management domain. It was evaluated in interviews with firefighters, who said it was a useful summary of their needs in emergency management. © Springer-Verlag 2013.