A Human-Centric Approach to Group-Based Context-Awareness

TL;DR

This paper introduces f-Context, a human-centric, service-based framework for group-based context-awareness that models complex uncertainties using language-action theory and computing with words, demonstrated through a mobile user scenario.

Contribution

It presents a novel, theory-based, modular framework for group context-awareness that manages high-order uncertainties with a layered architecture and agent-based implementation.

Findings

Feasibility demonstrated with a mobile user scenario.

Framework effectively models high-order uncertainties.

Provides a theoretical foundation for future research.

Abstract

The emerging need for qualitative approaches in context-aware information processing calls for proper modeling of context information and efficient handling of its inherent uncertainty resulted from human interpretation and usage. Many of the current approaches to context-awareness either lack a solid theoretical basis for modeling or ignore important requirements such as modularity, high-order uncertainty management and group-based context-awareness. Therefore, their real-world application and extendability remains limited. In this paper, we present f-Context as a service-based context-awareness framework, based on language-action perspective (LAP) theory for modeling. Then we identify some of the complex, informational parts of context which contain high-order uncertainties due to differences between members of the group in defining them. An agent-based perceptual computer architecture is proposed for implementing f-Context that uses computing with words (CWW) for handling uncertainty. The feasibility of f-Context is analyzed using a realistic scenario involving a group of mobile users. We believe that the proposed approach can open the door to future research on context-awareness by offering a theoretical foundation based on human communication, and a service-based layered architecture which exploits CWW for context-aware, group-based and platform-independent access to information systems.