A comprehensive approach for situation-awareness based on sensing and reasoning about context

Abstract

Research in Ubiquitous Computing and Ambience Intelligence aims at creating systems able to interact in an intelligent way with the environment, especially the user. To be aware of and to react on the current situation usually a complex set of features describing particular aspects of the environmental state has to be captured and processed. Currently, no standard mechanisms are available to model and reason about complex situations. In this paper, we describe a comprehensive approach for situation-awareness which covers the whole process of context capturing, context abstraction and decision making. Our solution comprises an ontology-based description of the sensing and reasoning environment, the management of sensing devices and reasoning components and the integration of these components into applications for decision making. These technological components are embedded into an conceptual architecture and generic framework which enable an easy and flexible development of situation-aware systems. We illustrate the use of our approach based on a meeting room scenario. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.