Ontological user modeling for ambient assisted living service personalization

Abstract

Given that the population is aging, it is crucial to develop technologies which will not only help the elderly to age in place, but also live in place with independent and healthy lifestyle. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) environments can help the elderly and people with functional diversity by anticipating their needs in specific situations and acting proactively in order to properly assist them in performing their activities of daily living (ADLs). Since the users needs tend to be very diverse in regard to functioning and disability levels, it is crucial to have personalized services capable of providing tailored assistance to a user based on their unique preferences, requirements, and desires. This paper introduces the ontology named AATUM (Ambient Assistive Technology User Model), to be adopted by systems whose goal is to enhance user quality of life within ALL environments through service personalization. Its main feature is the use of The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) to model the user’s functioning and disability levels in a consistent and internationally comparable way. The use of the proposed ontology is illustrated through its application in two different case studies.