Reflections on ambient intelligence systems handling of user preferences and needs

We start by assuming the hypothesis that Intelligent Environments are essentially user-centred systems and that the effectiveness of such systems is proportional to their knowledge of the user’s preferences and needs and to their capacity to deliver services based on that knowledge. We then start with the complex task of examining the intricacies of dealing with preferences and needs in a more systematic and computational way with the hope these concepts will be given more relevance in the future within our community. The aim of this discussion is to encourage future research to produce an effective way for Ambient Intelligence systems to represent and reason with the preferences and needs of the users of such systems

Reflections on ambient intelligence systems handling of user preferences and needs

We start by assuming the hypothesis that Intelligent Environments are essentially user-centred systems and that the effectiveness of such systems is proportional to their knowledge of the user’s preferences and needs and to their capacity to deliver services based on that knowledge. We then start with the complex task of examining the intricacies of dealing with preferences and needs in a more systematic and computational way with the hope these concepts will be given more relevance in the future within our community. The aim of this discussion is to encourage future research to produce an effective way for Ambient Intelligence systems to represent and reason with the preferences and needs of the users of such systems

An Ontological Account of the Action Theory of Economic Exchanges

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in thedevelopment of ontologically well-founded conceptual models for Information Systems in areas such as Service Management, Accounting Information Systems and Financial Reporting. Economic exchanges are central phenomena in these areas. For this reason, they occupy a prominent position in modelling frameworks such as the REA (Resource-EventAction) ISO Standard as well as the FIBO (Financial Industry BusinessOntology). In this paper, we begin a well-founded ontological analysisof economic exchanges inspired by a recent ontological view on the nature of economic transactions. According to this view, what counts asan economic transaction is based on an agreement on the actions thatthe agents are committed to perform. The agreement is in turn based on convergent preferences about the course of action to bring about. This view enables a unified treatment of economic exchanges, regardless the object of the transaction, and complies with the view that all economictransactions are about services. In this paper, we start developing our analysis in the framework of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO)