Context Modelling in Ambient Assisted Living: Trends and Lessons

Abstract

The current Internet of Things (IoT) development involves ambient intelligence which ensures that IoT applications provide services that are sensitive, adaptive, autonomous, and personalized to the users’ needs. A key issue of this adaptivity is context modelling and reasoning. Multiple proposals in the literature have tackled this problem according to various techniques and perspectives. This chapter provides a review of context modelling approaches, with a focus on services offered in Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) systems for persons in need of care. We present the characteristics of contextual information, services offered by AAL systems, as well as context and reasoning models that have been used to implement them. A discussion highlights the trends emerging from the scientific literature to select the most appropriate model to implement AAL systems according to the collected data and the services provided.