Introduction to the special issue on state of the art in engineering self-adaptive systems

Researchers and engineers have been studying self-adaptation for over a decade, which has resulted in a vast body of knowledge. Nevertheless, as technology progresses and software systems are increasingly integrated, new challenges emerge. Among these challenges are the need for new theoretical models for self-adaptation, methods to verify and validate self-adaptive systems, and disciplined engineering approaches to support decentralization of control in self-adaptive systems. Tackling these challenges requires a cross-disciplinary approach. The goal of this special issue is to provide an overview of the state of the art in the field of self-adaptive software systems. From 61 submission, 13 papers were selected for publication. These papers demonstrate that the integration of different research fields that is required to tackle the challenges in engineering self-adaptation is underway. We offer the papers of this special issue as a benchmark on the current state of the art, and an exposition of key ideas and directions for further work.