An Irish engineering team is to participate in a €2.5 million research programme investigating how ecology can be used to design more stable software systems.

The Diversify programme, which is funded by the European Commission, brings together researchers from France and Norway as well as the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre (Lero), in order to translate ecological concepts and processes into software design.

"This is a novel and exciting programme which for the first time will use the principles of ecological and evolutionary systems and apply them to software development," said Professor Siobhan Clarke of Trinity College Dublin, who is leading the Irish research team.

She said the limited amount of diversity in software is a major concern, adding that biodiversity is essential for the robustness and adaptability of ecological and other systems.

Lero director Mike Hinchey said the engineering centre specialises in research into designing software which can adapt in a stable manner over time. This is known as Evolving Critical Systems. "We anticipate that the unique Diversify programme will provide a breakthrough into automated technologies to maintain and evaluate stable systems at runtime," said Dr Hinchey.

The team at Trinity will be working on the three-year programme with researchers from INRIA and the University of Rennes in France, and SINTEF, the Norwegian research organisation