Trustworthiness and Quality of Context Information

Context-aware service platforms use context information to customize their services to the current users’ situation. Due to technical limitations in sensors and context reasoning algorithms, context information does not always represent accurately the reality, and Quality of Context (QoC) models have been proposed to quantify this inaccuracy. The problems we have identified with existing QoC models is that they do not follow a standard terminology and none of them clearly differentiate quality attributes related to instances of context information (e.g. accuracy and precision) from trustworthiness, which is a quality attribute related to the context information provider. In this paper we propose a QoC model and management architecture that supports the management of QoC trustworthiness and also contributes to the terminology alignment of existing QoC models.\ud In our QoC model, trustworthiness is a measurement of the reliability of a context information provider to provide context information about a specific entity according to a certain quality level. This trustworthiness value is used in our QoC management architecture to support context-aware service providers in the selection of trustworthy context\ud providers. As a proof of concept to demonstrate the feasibility of our work we show a prototype implementation of our QoC model and management architecture

Empowering users to control their privacy in context-aware system through interactive consent

Context-aware systems adapt their behaviour based on the context a user is in. Since context is potentially privacy sensitive information, users should be empowered to control how much of their context they are willing to share, under what conditions and for what purpose. We propose an interactive consent mechanism that allows this. It is interactive in the sense that users are asked for consent when a request for their context information is received. Our interactive consent mechanism complements a more traditional pre-configuration approach. We describe the architecture, the implementation of our interactive consent mechanism and a use case

CONTEXT MANAGEMENT: TOWARD ASSESSING QUALITY OF CONTEXT PARAMETERS IN A UBIQUITOUS AMBIENT ASSISTED LIVING ENVIRONMENT

This paper provides an approach to assessing Quality of Context (QoC) parameters in a ubiquitous Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) environment. Initially, the study presents a literature review on QoC, generating taxonomy. Then it introduces the context management architecture used. The proposal is verified with the Siafu simulator in an AAL scenario where the user’s health is monitored with information about blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. Considering some parameters, the proposed QoC assessment allows verifying the extent to which the context information is up-to-date, valid, accurate, complete and significant. The implementation of this proposal might mean a big social impact and a technological innovation applied to AAL, at the disposal and support of a significant number of individuals such as elderly or sick people, and with a more precise technology

A Quality of Context Evaluating Approach in an Ambient Assisted Living e-Health System

Abstract-This paper provides an approach to evaluating Quality of Context (QoC) parameters in a ubiquitous Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) environment. Lack of quality can lead assisted systems to respond inappropriately, resulting in errors related to assistance or support, or putting the user at risk. QoC assessments can improve these systems and set them to perform specific actions whenever lapses in quality occur. Initially, the study presents a literature review of QoC, then it introduces the context management architecture used. The proposal is verified with the Siafu simulator in an AAL scenario where the user's health is monitored with information about blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. Considering some parameters, the proposed QoC assessment allows verifying the extent to which the context information is up-to-date, valid, accurate, complete and significant. The implementation of this proposal might mean a big social impact and a technological innovation applied to AAL, at the disposal and support of a significant number of individuals such as elderly or sick people, and with a more precise technology

Quality-of-Context and its use for Protecting Privacy in Context Aware Systems

Context-awareness refers to systems that unobtrusively adapt to the environment of their users on the basis of context information, popularly known as context-aware systems. One inherent property of context information is that it possesses a certain quality, such as the certainty with which it has been determined and so on. Different aspects of this quality are represented by a set of indicators collectively known as Quality of Context (QoC). QoC also represents privacy sensitiveness of context information, i.e. context information of higher quality is considered more privacy sensitive. An important step towards making QoC indicators usable is to quantify them in tangible units. In this paper we provide motivation for using QoC indicators as meta-information for context management and use QoC as part of a user privacy enforcement framework. We propose five QoC indicators and present different alternatives available for expressing them quantitatively

Environnement logiciel pour l assistance à l autonomie à domicile (gestion de la dynamique et de l incertitude pour la fourniture sémantique en temps réel de services d assistance)

L hétérogénéité des environnements ainsi que la diversité des profils et des besoins des patients représentent des contraintes majeures qui remettent en question l utilisation à grande échelle des systèmes d assistance à l autonomie à domicile (AAL). En effet, afin de répondre à l évolution de l état des patients et de leurs besoins humains, les environnements AAL sont en évolution continue par l introduction ou la disparition de capteurs, de dispositifs d interaction et de services d assistance. Par conséquent, une plateforme générique et dynamique capable de s adapter à différents environnements et d intégrer de nouveaux capteurs, dispositifs d interaction et services d assistance est requise. La mise en œuvre d un tel aspect dynamique peut produire une situation d incertitude dérivée des problèmes techniques liés à la fiabilité des capteurs ou à des problèmes de réseau. Par conséquent, la notion d incertitude doit être introduite dans la représentation de contexte et la prise de décision afin de faire face à ce problème. Au cours de cette thèse, j ai développé une plateforme dynamique et extensible capable de s adapter à différents environnements et aux besoins des patients. Ceci a été réalisé sur la base de l approche Plug&Play sémantique que j ai proposé. Afin de traiter le problème d incertitude de l information lié à des problèmes techniques, j ai proposé une approche de mesure d incertitude en utilisant les caractéristiques intrinsèques des capteurs et leurs comportements fonctionnels. J ai aussi fourni un modèle de représentation sémantique et de raisonnement avec incertitude associé avec la théorie de Dempster-Shafer (DST) pour la prise de décisionThe heterogeneity of the environments as well as the diversity of patients needs and profiles are major constraints that challenge the spread of ambient assistive living (AAL) systems. AAL environments are usually evolving by the introduction or the disappearance of sensors, devices and assistive services to respond to the evolution of patients conditions and human needs. Therefore, a generic framework that is able to adapt to such dynamic environments and to integrate new sensors, devices and assistive services at runtime is required. Implementing such a dynamic aspect may produce an uncertainty derived from technical problems related to sensors reliability or network problems. Therefore, a notion of uncertain should be introduced in context representation and decision making in order to deal with this problem. During this thesis, I have developed a dynamic and extendible framework able to adapt to different environments and patients needs. This was achieved based on my proposed approach of semantic Plug&Play mechanism. In order to handle the problem of uncertain information related to technical problems, I have proposed an approach for uncertainty measurement based on intrinsic characteristics of the sensors and their functional behaviors, then I have provided a model of semantic representation and reasoning under uncertainty coupled with the Dempster-Shafer Theory of evidence (DST) for decision makingEVRY-INT (912282302) / SudocSudocFranceF

ICE-B 2010:proceedings of the International Conference on e-Business

The International Conference on e-Business, ICE-B 2010, aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners who are interested in e-Business technology and its current applications. The mentioned technology relates not only to more low-level technological issues, such as technology platforms and web services, but also to some higher-level issues, such as context awareness and enterprise models, and also the peculiarities of different possible applications of such technology. These are all areas of theoretical and practical importance within the broad scope of e-Business, whose growing importance can be seen from the increasing interest of the IT research community. The areas of the current conference are: (i) e-Business applications; (ii) Enterprise engineering; (iii) Mobility; (iv) Business collaboration and e-Services; (v) Technology platforms. Contributions vary from research-driven to being more practical oriented, reflecting innovative results in the mentioned areas. ICE-B 2010 received 66 submissions, of which 9% were accepted as full papers. Additionally, 27% were presented as short papers and 17% as posters. All papers presented at the conference venue were included in the SciTePress Digital Library. Revised best papers are published by Springer-Verlag in a CCIS Series book