From Simple Sensors to Complex Context: Insights for HabiTech

TL;DR

This paper explores how simple sensors can be integrated into complex smart home environments, emphasizing the importance of context, community, and privacy considerations for effective HabiTech applications.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive perspective on leveraging existing research to understand complex contexts in smart homes and communities, highlighting the role of spatial, temporal, and social data.

Findings

Contextual understanding enhances smart home data interpretation.

Community proximity influences data privacy and sharing.

Participatory approaches improve stakeholder engagement.

Abstract

We relate our previous as well as ongoing research in the domain of smart homes to the concept of HabiTech. HabiTech can benefit from existing approaches and findings in a broader context of whole buildings or communities within. Along with data comes context of data capture and data interpretation in different dimensions (spatial, temporal, social). For defining what is 'community' proximity plays a crucial role in context, both spatially as well as socially. A participatory approach for research in living in sensing environments is promising to address complexity as well as interests of different stakeholders. Often it is the complex context that makes even simple sensor data sensitive, i.e. in terms of privacy. When it comes to handle shared data then concepts from the physical world for shared spaces might be related back to the data domain.