Integration of multisensor hybrid reasoners to support personal autonomy in the smart home.

The deployment of the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) paradigm requires designing and integrating user-centered smart environments to assist people in their daily life activities. This research paper details an integration and validation of multiple heterogeneous sensors with hybrid reasoners that support decision making in order to monitor personal and environmental data at a smart home in a private way. The results innovate on knowledge-based platforms, distributed sensors, connected objects, accessibility and authentication methods to promote independent living for elderly people. TALISMAN+, the AmI framework deployed, integrates four subsystems in the smart home: (i) a mobile biomedical telemonitoring platform to provide elderly patients with continuous disease management; (ii) an integration middleware that allows context capture from heterogeneous sensors to program environment¿s reaction; (iii) a vision system for intelligent monitoring of daily activities in the home; and (iv) an ontologies-based integrated reasoning platform to trigger local actions and manage private information in the smart home. The framework was integrated in two real running environments, the UPM Accessible Digital Home and MetalTIC house, and successfully validated by five experts in home care, elderly people and personal autonomy

A knowledge based framework to support active aging at home based environments

Information and Communication Technologies can support Active Aging strategies in a scenario like the Smart Home. This paper details a person centered distributed framework, called TALISMAN+, whose aim is to promote personal autonomy by taking advantage of knowledge based technologies, sensors networks, mobile devices and internet. The proposed solution can support an elderly person to keep living alone at his house without being obliged to move to a residential center. The framework is composed by five subsystems: a reasoning module that is able to take local decisions at home in order to support active aging, a biomedical variables telemonitorisation platform running on a mobile device, a hybrid reasoning middleware aimed to assess cardiovascular risk in a remote way, a private vision based sensor subsystem, and a secure telematics solution that guarantees confidentiality for personal information. TALISMAN+ framework deployment is being evaluated at a real environment like the Accessible Digital Home

Діяльність інтелектуального агента для оцінювання інформації у специфікаціях вимог до програмного забезпечення

Відомі інтелектуальні агенти на основі онтологічного підходу не розв’язують задачу кількісного оцінювання інформації у специфікації вимог до ПЗ. Тому задачею даного дослідження є розроблення інтелектуального агента на основі онтологічного підходу для оцінювання інформації у специфікаціях вимог до ПЗ. Розроблено метод діяльності інтелектуального агента на основі онтологічного підходу для оцінювання інформації у специфікаціях вимог до ПЗ, на основі якого був розроблений інтелектуальний агент.The known ontology-based intelligent agents don't solve the task of quantitative evaluating the information in the software requirements specifications (SRS). So, the task of this study is the development of the ontology-based intelligent agent for evaluating the information in the SRS. The method of action of the ontology-based intelligent agent for evaluating the information in the SRS are developed. On the basis of the developed method, the intelligent agent is realized

Розроблення інтелектуального агента для аналізу нефункційних характеристик у специфікаціях вимог до програмного забезпечення

One of the urgent present-day tasks consists in ensuring an automated analysis of specifications of software requirements for sufficiency of information on nonfunctional component characteristics of software quality. Analysis of known intelligent agents based on the ontological approach has shown that these agents do not solve the problem of quantifying sufficiency of information in the specification of software requirements for determining nonfunctional characteristics of software.The objective of this study was to implement the intelligent agent based on the ontological approach for analyzing information on nonfunctional characteristics in specifications of software requirements.A model of intelligent agent activity has been developed based on the ontological approach for evaluating specifications of software requirements. It reflects features of assessing information sufficiency for determining nonfunctional component characteristics of software quality. The developed model is a theoretical basis for implementing the intelligent agent based on the ontological approach for evaluating specifications of software requirements.The intelligent agent based on the ontological approach has been implemented for evaluating information on nonfunctional characteristics in the specifications of software requirements. The implemented agent forms conclusions on sufficiency or insufficiency of information about nonfunctional component characteristics of software quality in the specification of requirements to actual software. In addition, it quantifies the level of information sufficiency in the specification of requirements to actual software for determining each of nonfunctional characteristics of software and determining all nonfunctional component characteristics of software quality in aggregate. The agent provides a list of attributes that should supplement the specification of requirements for increasing the level of sufficiency of its information as well as visualization of gaps in knowledge of all nonfunctional component characteristics of software quality.The results of functioning of the implemented agent have shown an increase in the level of information sufficiency in the specification of software requirements. The developed intelligent agent makes it possible to partially eliminate human participation in information processing, avoid loss of essential information and minimize occurrence of errors at the early stages of the software life cycle.Сейчас актуальной задачей является автоматизированный анализ спецификаций требований к программному обеспечению (ПО) на предмет достаточности информации о нефункциональных характеристиках-составляющих качества ПО. Проведенный анализ известных интеллектуальных агентов на основе онтологического подхода показал, что известные агенты не решают задачу количественной оценки достаточности информации в спецификации требований к ПО для определения нефункциональных характеристик ПО.Задачей данного исследования является реализация интеллектуального агента на основе онтологического подхода для анализа информации о нефункциональных характеристиках в спецификациях требований к ПО.Разработана модель деятельности интеллектуального агента на основе онтологического подхода для оценки спецификаций требований к ПО. Она отражает особенности оценки достаточности информации для определения нефункциональных характеристик-составляющих качества ПО. Разработанная модель является теоретическим основанием для реализации интеллектуального агента на основе онтологического подхода для оценки спецификаций требований к ПО.Реализован интеллектуальный агент на основе онтологического подхода для оценки информации о нефункциональных характеристиках в спецификациях требований к ПО. Реализованный агент формирует заключение о достаточности или недостаточности информации о нефункциональных характеристиках-составляющих качества ПО в спецификации требований к реальному ПО. Кроме того, он количественно оценивает уровень достаточности информации в спецификации требований к реальному ПО для определения каждой нефункциональной характеристики ПО и для определения всех нефункциональных характеристик-составляющих качества ПО вместе. Агентом предоставляется список атрибутов, которыми следует дополнить спецификацию требований для повышения уровня достаточности ее информации, а также визуализация пробелов в знаниях обо всех нефункциональных характеристиках-составляющих качества ПО.Результаты функционирования реализованного агента в комплексе обеспечивают повышение уровня достаточности информации в спецификации требований к ПО. Разработанный интеллектуальный агент позволяет частично устранить человека из процессов обработки информации, избежать потерь существенной информации и минимизировать возникновение ошибок на ранних этапах жизненного цикла ПОСьогодні актуальною задачею є автоматизований аналіз специфікацій вимог до програмного забезпечення (ПЗ) на предмет достатності інформації щодо нефункційних характеристик-складових якості ПЗ. Проведений аналіз відомих інтелектуальних агентів на основі онтологічного підходу показав, що відомі агенти не розв’язують задачу кількісного оцінювання достатності інформації у специфікації вимог до ПЗ для визначення нефункційних характеристик ПЗ.Задачею даного дослідження є реалізація інтелектуального агента на основі онтологічного підходу для аналізу інформації щодо нефункційних характеристик у специфікаціях вимог до ПЗ.Розроблено модель діяльності інтелектуального агента на основі онтологічного підходу для оцінювання специфікацій вимог до ПЗ. Вона відображає особливості оцінювання достатності інформації для визначення нефункційних характеристик-складових якості ПЗ. Розроблена модель є теоретичним підґрунтям для реалізації інтелектуального агента на основі онтологічного підходу для оцінювання специфікацій вимог до ПЗ.Реалізовано інтелектуальний агент на основі онтологічного підходу для оцінювання інформації щодо нефункційних характеристик у специфікаціях вимог до ПЗ. Реалізований агент формує висновок про достатність або недостатність інформації щодо нефункційних характеристик-складових якості ПЗ у специфікації вимог до реального ПЗ. Крім цього, він кількісно оцінює рівень достатності інформації у специфікації вимог до реального ПЗ для визначення кожної нефункційної характеристики ПЗ та для визначення всіх нефункційних характеристик-складових якості ПЗ разом. Агентом надається список атрибутів, якими варто доповнити специфікацію вимог для підвищення рівня достатності її інформації, а також візуалізація прогалин у знаннях про всі нефункційні характеристики-складові якості ПЗ.Результати функціонування реалізованого агента в комплексі забезпечують підвищення рівня достатності інформації у специфікації вимог до ПЗ. Розроблений інтелектуальний агент дозволяє частково усунути людину з процесів опрацювання інформації, уникнути втрат істотної інформації і мінімізувати виникнення помилок на ранніх етапах життєвого циклу П

Inferring Complex Activities for Context-aware Systems within Smart Environments

The rising ageing population worldwide and the prevalence of age-related conditions such as physical fragility, mental impairments and chronic diseases have significantly impacted the quality of life and caused a shortage of health and care services. Over-stretched healthcare providers are leading to a paradigm shift in public healthcare provisioning. Thus, Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) using Smart Homes (SH) technologies has been rigorously investigated to help address the aforementioned problems. Human Activity Recognition (HAR) is a critical component in AAL systems which enables applications such as just-in-time assistance, behaviour analysis, anomalies detection and emergency notifications. This thesis is aimed at investigating challenges faced in accurately recognising Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) performed by single or multiple inhabitants within smart environments. Specifically, this thesis explores five complementary research challenges in HAR. The first study contributes to knowledge by developing a semantic-enabled data segmentation approach with user-preferences. The second study takes the segmented set of sensor data to investigate and recognise human ADLs at multi-granular action level; coarse- and fine-grained action level. At the coarse-grained actions level, semantic relationships between the sensor, object and ADLs are deduced, whereas, at fine-grained action level, object usage at the satisfactory threshold with the evidence fused from multimodal sensor data is leveraged to verify the intended actions. Moreover, due to imprecise/vague interpretations of multimodal sensors and data fusion challenges, fuzzy set theory and fuzzy web ontology language (fuzzy-OWL) are leveraged. The third study focuses on incorporating uncertainties caused in HAR due to factors such as technological failure, object malfunction, and human errors. Hence, existing studies uncertainty theories and approaches are analysed and based on the findings, probabilistic ontology (PR-OWL) based HAR approach is proposed. The fourth study extends the first three studies to distinguish activities conducted by more than one inhabitant in a shared smart environment with the use of discriminative sensor-based techniques and time-series pattern analysis. The final study investigates in a suitable system architecture with a real-time smart environment tailored to AAL system and proposes microservices architecture with sensor-based off-the-shelf and bespoke sensing methods. The initial semantic-enabled data segmentation study was evaluated with 100% and 97.8% accuracy to segment sensor events under single and mixed activities scenarios. However, the average classification time taken to segment each sensor events have suffered from 3971ms and 62183ms for single and mixed activities scenarios, respectively. The second study to detect fine-grained-level user actions was evaluated with 30 and 153 fuzzy rules to detect two fine-grained movements with a pre-collected dataset from the real-time smart environment. The result of the second study indicate good average accuracy of 83.33% and 100% but with the high average duration of 24648ms and 105318ms, and posing further challenges for the scalability of fusion rule creations. The third study was evaluated by incorporating PR-OWL ontology with ADL ontologies and Semantic-Sensor-Network (SSN) ontology to define four types of uncertainties presented in the kitchen-based activity. The fourth study illustrated a case study to extended single-user AR to multi-user AR by combining RFID tags and fingerprint sensors discriminative sensors to identify and associate user actions with the aid of time-series analysis. The last study responds to the computations and performance requirements for the four studies by analysing and proposing microservices-based system architecture for AAL system. A future research investigation towards adopting fog/edge computing paradigms from cloud computing is discussed for higher availability, reduced network traffic/energy, cost, and creating a decentralised system. As a result of the five studies, this thesis develops a knowledge-driven framework to estimate and recognise multi-user activities at fine-grained level user actions. This framework integrates three complementary ontologies to conceptualise factual, fuzzy and uncertainties in the environment/ADLs, time-series analysis and discriminative sensing environment. Moreover, a distributed software architecture, multimodal sensor-based hardware prototypes, and other supportive utility tools such as simulator and synthetic ADL data generator for the experimentation were developed to support the evaluation of the proposed approaches. The distributed system is platform-independent and currently supported by an Android mobile application and web-browser based client interfaces for retrieving information such as live sensor events and HAR results

NoMoDEI : A framework for Norm Monitoring on Dynamic Electronic Institutions

With the growth of the Internet, computational systems have become more and more complex, often including complicate interconnected networks of autonomous components. The need to bring some organisational structure into autonomous systems becomes urgent, as this allows regulating the behaviour of the different autonomous components to ensure their objectives are aligned with the holistic objectives of the system. Normative Systems are one of the mechanisms that can be applied to define and enforce acceptable behaviour within distributed electronic systems which should comply with some (human) regulations. One of the requirements to effectively implement Normative Systems is to be able to assess, at runtime, the state of the normative environment. Existing lines of research have already tried to tackle this issue on some simple scenarios. However, more complex scenarios may appear, for instance, scenarios where the normative context is not static, but it expands and contracts as new norms are added to the institution and removed from it respectively. As in human legal systems, it is easy to foresee that some of these electronic normative environments will not be static. They should be able to evolve through time as regulations change, effectively adapting to new situations and behaviours. Under these conditions, a monitoring system must be able to continue computing the state of the normative environment at runtime, as often we can not afford to perform the changes on the normative context off-line. Furthermore, it must be guaranteed the monitoring system can keep producing states of the normative environment that are consistent with the changes performed on the normative context. For instance, if a norm has been removed from the normative context, it does not make sense anymore to compute normative states where the norm has been violated. In this thesis we present NoMoDEI, a normative monitoring framework for dynamic Electronic Institutions. We formalize and develop an extended normative framework and architecture to cope with scenarios where the normative context is dynamic, therefore norms can be added, removed and updated. The operations are to be performed at run-time, without having to stop computing the normative state. The normative states computed are consistent with the expansion and contraction operations. NoMoDEI is introduced in three steps. First, we formally define the operations to be supported in order to allow for expanding and contracting the normative context. Then, we instantiate the formal operations, providing implementation details. Finally, we demonstrate our framework by applying it to two use cases: E-health systems and waste-water management on a river basin.Amb l'expansió d'Internet els sistemes computacionals han esdevingut més complexos, sovint incorporant complicades xarxes interconnectades de components autònoms. Es per això que la necessitat d'incorporar estructures organitzacionals en el sistemes autònoms s 'accentua, donat que aquestes estructures permeten regular el comportament dels diferents components autònoms, tot assegurant que els seus objectius es troben alineats amb els objectius generals del sistema. Els Sistemes Normatius (i.e. Normative Systems) són un dels mecanismes que podem aplicar per definir i imposar patrons acceptables de comportament dintre de sistemes electrònics distribuïts. Això esdevé especialment important quan el sistema es troba regimentat per regulacions (normalment humanes). Un dels requeriments per implementar Sistemes Normatius és ser capaços de determinar, en temps d'execució, l'estat de l'entorn normatiu. Existeixen línies de recerca que ja han tractat aquest problema en alguns escenaris simples. El món real però ens ofereix escenaris més complexes, com per exemple, escenaris on el context normatiu no és estàtic, si no que s'expandeix i contrau a mesura que noves normes són afegides o eliminades de la institució. Tal com passa als sistemes legals humans, és fàcil preveure que alguns contextos normatius electrònics no seran estàtics. Aquests contextos haurien de ser capaços d'evolucionar a través del temps a mesura que les regulacions canvien, adaptant-se a noves situacions i comportaments. Sota aquestes condicions, un sistema de monitorització ha de ser capaç de continuar calculant l'estat de l'entorn normatiu en temps d'execució, ja que sovint no ens podem permetre realitzar els canvis a l'entorn normatiu aturant el procés de monitorització. És més s'ha de garantir que el sistema de monitorització sigui capaç de continuar produint es tats de l’entorn normatiu de forma consistent amb els canvis realitzats. Per exemple, el fet d'eliminar una norma fa que no tingui gaire sentit continuar calculant es tats normatius on aquesta norma ha es tat violada. A aquesta Tesi presentem NoMoDEI, una infraestructura de monitorització normativa per institucions electròniques dinàmiques. Formalitzem i desenvolupem una infraestructura de monitorització normativa estesa capaç d'operar en escenaris on el context normatiu es dinàmic. Es a dir, diverses normes poden ser introduïdes, eliminades o actualitzades del context normatiu en qualsevol moment. Aquestes operacions s'han de poder realitzar en temps d'execució, es a dir, sense deixar de calcular l'estat normatiu. Es més, els estats normatius calculats han de ser consistents amb les respectives operacions d'extensió o contracció del context. Durant la Tesi presentem NoMoDEI en tres passos. Primer proporcionem una definició formal de les operacions que la infraestructura ha de suportar per permetre expandir i contraure el context normatiu. A continuació instanciem aquestes operacions proporcionant detalls d'implementació. Finalment demostrem que la nostra infraestructura pot ser aplicada a casos d'ús del món real introduint dos casos: sistemes de salut electrònics (i.e. E-health) i sistemes de tractament d’aigües residuals a la conca d’un riuPostprint (published version

The Impact of Digital Technologies on Public Health in Developed and Developing Countries

This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Conference on String Processing and Information Retrieval, ICOST 2020, held in Hammamet, Tunisia, in June 2020.* The 17 full papers and 23 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 49 submissions. They cover topics such as: IoT and AI solutions for e-health; biomedical and health informatics; behavior and activity monitoring; behavior and activity monitoring; and wellbeing technology. *This conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic

Improving Access and Mental Health for Youth Through Virtual Models of Care

The overall objective of this research is to evaluate the use of a mobile health smartphone application (app) to improve the mental health of youth between the ages of 14–25 years, with symptoms of anxiety/depression. This project includes 115 youth who are accessing outpatient mental health services at one of three hospitals and two community agencies. The youth and care providers are using eHealth technology to enhance care. The technology uses mobile questionnaires to help promote self-assessment and track changes to support the plan of care. The technology also allows secure virtual treatment visits that youth can participate in through mobile devices. This longitudinal study uses participatory action research with mixed methods. The majority of participants identified themselves as Caucasian (66.9%). Expectedly, the demographics revealed that Anxiety Disorders and Mood Disorders were highly prevalent within the sample (71.9% and 67.5% respectively). Findings from the qualitative summary established that both staff and youth found the software and platform beneficial

The Impact of Digital Technologies on Public Health in Developed and Developing Countries

This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Conference on String Processing and Information Retrieval, ICOST 2020, held in Hammamet, Tunisia, in June 2020.* The 17 full papers and 23 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 49 submissions. They cover topics such as: IoT and AI solutions for e-health; biomedical and health informatics; behavior and activity monitoring; behavior and activity monitoring; and wellbeing technology. *This conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic

NoMoDEI : A framework for Norm Monitoring on Dynamic Electronic Institutions

With the growth of the Internet, computational systems have become more and more complex, often including complicate interconnected networks of autonomous components. The need to bring some organisational structure into autonomous systems becomes urgent, as this allows regulating the behaviour of the different autonomous components to ensure their objectives are aligned with the holistic objectives of the system. Normative Systems are one of the mechanisms that can be applied to define and enforce acceptable behaviour within distributed electronic systems which should comply with some (human) regulations. One of the requirements to effectively implement Normative Systems is to be able to assess, at runtime, the state of the normative environment. Existing lines of research have already tried to tackle this issue on some simple scenarios. However, more complex scenarios may appear, for instance, scenarios where the normative context is not static, but it expands and contracts as new norms are added to the institution and removed from it respectively. As in human legal systems, it is easy to foresee that some of these electronic normative environments will not be static. They should be able to evolve through time as regulations change, effectively adapting to new situations and behaviours. Under these conditions, a monitoring system must be able to continue computing the state of the normative environment at runtime, as often we can not afford to perform the changes on the normative context off-line. Furthermore, it must be guaranteed the monitoring system can keep producing states of the normative environment that are consistent with the changes performed on the normative context. For instance, if a norm has been removed from the normative context, it does not make sense anymore to compute normative states where the norm has been violated. In this thesis we present NoMoDEI, a normative monitoring framework for dynamic Electronic Institutions. We formalize and develop an extended normative framework and architecture to cope with scenarios where the normative context is dynamic, therefore norms can be added, removed and updated. The operations are to be performed at run-time, without having to stop computing the normative state. The normative states computed are consistent with the expansion and contraction operations. NoMoDEI is introduced in three steps. First, we formally define the operations to be supported in order to allow for expanding and contracting the normative context. Then, we instantiate the formal operations, providing implementation details. Finally, we demonstrate our framework by applying it to two use cases: E-health systems and waste-water management on a river basin.Amb l'expansió d'Internet els sistemes computacionals han esdevingut més complexos, sovint incorporant complicades xarxes interconnectades de components autònoms. Es per això que la necessitat d'incorporar estructures organitzacionals en el sistemes autònoms s 'accentua, donat que aquestes estructures permeten regular el comportament dels diferents components autònoms, tot assegurant que els seus objectius es troben alineats amb els objectius generals del sistema. Els Sistemes Normatius (i.e. Normative Systems) són un dels mecanismes que podem aplicar per definir i imposar patrons acceptables de comportament dintre de sistemes electrònics distribuïts. Això esdevé especialment important quan el sistema es troba regimentat per regulacions (normalment humanes). Un dels requeriments per implementar Sistemes Normatius és ser capaços de determinar, en temps d'execució, l'estat de l'entorn normatiu. Existeixen línies de recerca que ja han tractat aquest problema en alguns escenaris simples. El món real però ens ofereix escenaris més complexes, com per exemple, escenaris on el context normatiu no és estàtic, si no que s'expandeix i contrau a mesura que noves normes són afegides o eliminades de la institució. Tal com passa als sistemes legals humans, és fàcil preveure que alguns contextos normatius electrònics no seran estàtics. Aquests contextos haurien de ser capaços d'evolucionar a través del temps a mesura que les regulacions canvien, adaptant-se a noves situacions i comportaments. Sota aquestes condicions, un sistema de monitorització ha de ser capaç de continuar calculant l'estat de l'entorn normatiu en temps d'execució, ja que sovint no ens podem permetre realitzar els canvis a l'entorn normatiu aturant el procés de monitorització. És més s'ha de garantir que el sistema de monitorització sigui capaç de continuar produint es tats de l’entorn normatiu de forma consistent amb els canvis realitzats. Per exemple, el fet d'eliminar una norma fa que no tingui gaire sentit continuar calculant es tats normatius on aquesta norma ha es tat violada. A aquesta Tesi presentem NoMoDEI, una infraestructura de monitorització normativa per institucions electròniques dinàmiques. Formalitzem i desenvolupem una infraestructura de monitorització normativa estesa capaç d'operar en escenaris on el context normatiu es dinàmic. Es a dir, diverses normes poden ser introduïdes, eliminades o actualitzades del context normatiu en qualsevol moment. Aquestes operacions s'han de poder realitzar en temps d'execució, es a dir, sense deixar de calcular l'estat normatiu. Es més, els estats normatius calculats han de ser consistents amb les respectives operacions d'extensió o contracció del context. Durant la Tesi presentem NoMoDEI en tres passos. Primer proporcionem una definició formal de les operacions que la infraestructura ha de suportar per permetre expandir i contraure el context normatiu. A continuació instanciem aquestes operacions proporcionant detalls d'implementació. Finalment demostrem que la nostra infraestructura pot ser aplicada a casos d'ús del món real introduint dos casos: sistemes de salut electrònics (i.e. E-health) i sistemes de tractament d’aigües residuals a la conca d’un ri