Using ontologies for managing user profiles in personalised mobile service delivery

Abstract

We are now living in a technological world where the adoption of pervasive technologies is becoming more prevalent. This has sparked growth in the development of services for delivery in pervasive environments, across a number of application domains including healthcare. User personalisation, in particular, has become an important element for delivering pervasive healthcare, which has coincided with the rapid increase in the use of smart-phone technologies. Increased user dependence on technology has resulted in a need to provide personalised service delivery, in the form of adaptive technology. Many studies have explored the use of ontological user modelling techniques to facilitate mobile service personalisation. Ontological user models have been developed for use within personalised web information retrieval systems, adaptive user interface design and within public services. Nevertheless, these models have not been adopted to implement the personalisation of assistive services for mobile users within pervasive environments. Every person is unique and therefore, will exhibit unique behaviours, wants and needs, which will also change over time. Adaptive technologies must be able to cater for human behavioural changes, and change to suit them via on-demand service delivery. This Chapter focuses on two key perspectives. Firstly, the modelling of different users within pervasive environments is introduced and critiqued and secondly, the topics of ontological modelling and user profile representation are contextualised within a discussion surrounding previous research undertaken by the authors.