A living lab for ambient assisted living in the municipality of schwechat

Abstract

This paper describes the Living Lab for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies and services in the city of Schwechat. Local authorities, social service providers, elderly persons, carers, research entities and companies have started to cooperate closely as full partners in this Living Lab in order to invent, discuss, explore, implement, and evaluate innovative technologies to support the independent living of senior citizens. This approach allows focusing on the actual needs of the future users by involving them right from the beginning. The paper gives an overview on the approach of the Living Lab, it describes some pilot projects currently being carried out and discusses the preliminary experiences gathered since 2006. The first findings in the Living Lab are promising, especially the feedback from the user community is very positive. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.