Eleftheria Katsiri, Jean Bacon and Alan Mycroft
The event‐driven paradigm is appropriate for context aware, distributed applications, yet basic events may be too low level to be meaningful to users. The authors aim to argue…
Abstract
Purpose
The event‐driven paradigm is appropriate for context aware, distributed applications, yet basic events may be too low level to be meaningful to users. The authors aim to argue that this bottom‐up approach is insufficient to handle very low‐level sensor data or to express all the queries users might wish to make.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors propose an alternative model for querying and subscribing transparently to distributed state in a real‐time, ubiquitous, sensor‐driven environment such as is found in Sentient Computing.
Findings
The framework consists of four components: a state‐based, temporal first‐order logic (TFOL) model that represents the concrete state of the world, as perceived by sensors; an expressive TFOL‐based language, the Abstract Event Specification Language (AESL) for creating abstract event definitions, subscriptions and queries; a higherorder service (Abstract Event Detection Service) that accepts a subscription containing an abstract event definition as an argument and in return publishes an interface to a further service, an abstract event detector; and a satisfiability service that applies classical, logical satisfiability in order to check the satisfiability of the AESL definitions against the world model, in a manner similar to a constraint‐satisfaction problem.
Originality/value
The paper develops a model‐based approach, appropriate for distributed, heterogeneous environments.
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Keywords
Abraham Bernstein, Peter Vorburger and Patrice Egger
People are subjected to a multitude of interruptions. In order to manage these interruptions it is imperative to predict a person's interruptability – his/her current readiness or…
Abstract
Purpose
People are subjected to a multitude of interruptions. In order to manage these interruptions it is imperative to predict a person's interruptability – his/her current readiness or inclination to be interrupted. This paper aims to introduce the approach of direct interruptability inference from sensor streams (accelerometer and audio data) in a ubiquitous computing setup and to show that it provides highly accurate and robust predictions.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors argue that scenarios are central for evaluating the performance of ubiquitous computing devices (and interruptability predicting devices in particular) and prove this on the setup employed, which was based on that of Kern and Schiele.
Findings
The paper demonstrates that scenarios provide the foundation for avoiding misleading results, and provide the basis for a stratified scenario‐based learning model, which greatly speeds up the training of such devices.
Practical implications
The direct prediction seems to be competitive or even superior to indirect prediction methods and no drawbacks have been observed yet.
Originality/value
The paper introduces a method for accurately predicting a person's interruptability directly from simple sensors without any intermediate steps/symbols.
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Tarak Chaari, Frédérique Laforest and Augusto Celentano
The simple environment for context aware systems (SECAS) Project deals with the adaptation of applications to the context (user preferences and environment, terminal, etc.). The…
Abstract
Purpose
The simple environment for context aware systems (SECAS) Project deals with the adaptation of applications to the context (user preferences and environment, terminal, etc.). The authors aim to develop a platform which makes the services, data and the user interface of applications adaptable to different context situations.
Design/methodology/approach
Previous research has concentrated on how to capture context data and how to carry it to the application. The present work focuses on the impact of context on the application core. A case study in the medical field is also analysed.
Findings
The paper illustrates a new definition of the context which separates the application data from the parameters of the context. This definition helps to establish a complete study on how to adapt applications on their three dimensions (services, content and presentation) to the context.
Originality/value
The paper presents the SECAS platform, one that ensures the deployment of adaptive context‐aware applications.
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Ronan Fox, James Cooley and Manfred Hauswirth
The purpose of this paper is to identify the gap that currently exists between enterprise and consumer‐focused mashup tools in terms of personalized, trusted collaboration. The…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify the gap that currently exists between enterprise and consumer‐focused mashup tools in terms of personalized, trusted collaboration. The authors describe how Sqwelch, a semantically enabled mashup maker, addresses this gap during the design of mashups and in their execution.
Design/methodology/approach
Sqwelch enables the composition of mashups based on the concept of trust explicitly specified by users through a visual interface. Taxonomies are used to enable lightweight mediation of payloads delivered through a publish/subscribe mechanism.
Findings
The authors demonstrate the use of Sqwelch as a proof of concept in the remote delivery of healthcare, and how Sqwelch has been used to address areas of trust and collaboration in the delivery of telehealth services.
Originality/value
Integrating trust and collaboration across the boundaries of enterprises is required where sensitive data are transferred across those boundaries in the expectation of the delivery of a service. Across these boundaries, the authors find variations in users' skills, their expectations, and their responsibilities. The prototype described here enables users to discover, compose, share and collaborate in the day‐to‐day use of systems that match personalized requirements.
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Ronny Kramer, Marko Modsching and Klaus ten Hagen
The behavior of tourists strongly depends on the availability and quality of information. Too little information as well as too much can be disorienting and forces many tourists…
Abstract
Purpose
The behavior of tourists strongly depends on the availability and quality of information. Too little information as well as too much can be disorienting and forces many tourists to join the majority visiting major sights. This causes a few crowded places in contrast to many which are under‐utilized. A Destination Management Organization has the goal to spread tourists more evenly, whereas the tourists would like to enjoy the destination to its full potential according to their personal interests. The paper aims to focus on the issues surrounding the creation of a mobile tourist guide.
Design/methodology/approach
A field trial was conducted in the summer of 2005 to study the following questions as a precondition for the development: Is it possible to seed generic interest profiles in the mobile context that allow the accurate prediction of actual rankings? Are the interest profiles sufficiently diverse to base personalized tours on individual interest profiles instead of interest prototypes? How do personalized tours affect the spatial behavior of tourist? Three methods to elicit the generic preferences of tourist in the mobile context are compared with actual rankings using Spearman's rank order coefficient.
Findings
The diversity of the interest profiles is analyzed in various ways leading to the conclusion that personalized interest profiles are necessary. For the gathered profiles tours are computed and simulated in order to gain a first insight into the effect on the spatial behavior of tourists.
Originality/value
The dynamic tour guide is supporting both goals by means of pervasive computing based on the actual context which is defined by personal interests, location and schedule of a tourist. It enables a personalized, spontaneous and guided tour.
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Kostas Stefanidis, Evaggelia Pitoura and Panos Vassiliadis
A context‐aware system is a system that uses context to provide relevant information or services to its users. While there has been a variety of context middleware infrastructures…
Abstract
Purpose
A context‐aware system is a system that uses context to provide relevant information or services to its users. While there has been a variety of context middleware infrastructures and context‐aware applications, little work has been done on integrating context into database management systems. The purpose of this paper is to consider a preference database system that supports context‐aware queries, that is, queries whose results depend on the context at the time of their submission.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper proposes using data cubes to store the dependencies between context‐dependent preferences and database relations and on‐line analytical processing techniques for processing context‐aware queries. This allows for the manipulation of the captured context data at various levels of abstraction, for instance, in the case of a context parameter representing location, preferences can be expressed, for example, at the level of a city, the level of a country or both. To improve query performance, the paper uses an auxiliary data structure, called context tree. The context tree stores results of past context‐aware queries indexed by the context of their execution. Finally, the paper outline the implementation of a prototype context‐aware restaurant recommender.
Findings
The use of context is important in many applications such as pervasive computing where it is important that users receive only relevant information.
Originality/value
Although there is much research on location‐aware query processing in the area of spatial‐temporal databases, integrating other forms of context in query processing is a rather new research topic.
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Diabetes mellitus is the most common non-communicable medical condition worldwide, yet little is known about the relationship this disease has to the built environment. The…
Abstract
Purpose
Diabetes mellitus is the most common non-communicable medical condition worldwide, yet little is known about the relationship this disease has to the built environment. The purpose of this paper is to throw some much needed light on the matter by shifting attention away from the epidemiology of the medical condition and towards the anthropology of the unhealthy lifestyles whose habit-persistent practices are associated with the spread of the disease.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper reviews the delicate relation between diabetes, unhealthy lifestyles and built environments. It discusses the potential of smart city technologies to promote healthy lifestyles, particularly for diabetic patients.
Findings
Smart cities currently being developed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) do not highlight the health-related benefits of their design and layout and there are currently no plans for the community to address the unhealthy lifestyles of existing neighbourhoods as part of a sustainable urban development programme. So, realising the health-related benefits of smart city neighbourhoods in the KSA shall be challenging.
Research limitations/implications
In attempting to tackle diabetes, cities not only need to be “green and lean” in planning the healthy lifestyles they set out for the development of communities, but also “get smart” about the digital technologies and platform of electronically enhanced services which are required to meet the design and layout challenges smart city neighbourhoods pose.
Originality/value
Gulf and Saudi cities should adopt the IntelCities analogy, so the virtual planning and development of “smart city neighbourhoods”, along with their design and layout of buildings, can tackle the underlying causes.