Context management and reasoning for adaptive service provisioning

Abstract

The European research project "C-Cast" (Context-Aware Content Casting) aims at providing an end-to-end system design for context-aware services and content provisioning. The project does not limit itself to reasoning but embraces also efficient service provisioning to user groups detected and formed according to the inferred user context. This paper presents the architecture components related to context acquisition through the reasoning and context management. It presents a framework for modular multi domain context detection and shows how required context can be obtained by acquiring a variety of source data and applying reasoning mechanisms for aggregation. The raw data can originate from virtual, logical or physical sensors, covering the physical environment of the user, profile information and other databases (e.g. calendar, address book). Based on the derived context, content or service provisioning can be adapted in order to reduce need for explicit feedback and to increase the overall user experience. Due to the extensive dynamics in a mobile environment and rapid context changes, event-based reasoning is applied, ensuring efficiency and scalability. Furthermore, a user interface for easy and fast extension of the context model is introduced. ©2009 IEEE.