S-CUBE 2012, the 3rd International Conference on Sensor Systems and Software, provides an ideal venue to address the research challenges facing system development and software support for wireless sensor network-based systems that have the potential to impact society in many ways. Currently, wireless sensor networks enable innovative and interesting application scenarios that may support a large amount of different applications including environmental monitoring, seismic sensing, smart-homes, disaster prevention, building automation, object tracking, nuclear reactor control, fire detection, agriculture, healthcare, utility infrastructure monitoring, and traffic monitoring.