Semantic and Dweller-Based Decision Support System for the Reconfiguration of Domestic Environments: RecAAL

Abstract

Researches in the field of ambient assisted living (AAL) have increased in the last ten years, and the paradigms of the smart home have widely spread. Smart homes must consider the health-related issues and the real needs deriving from the ageing of their dwellers. In the smart home, appliances are expected to provide support to the residents, especially when they are characterized by disabilities and/or impairments related to ageing. While most of the AAL solutions presented in literature rely on complex systems and architectures, residents affected by mild or moderate disabilities can take advantage of just a simpler reconfiguration of living environments, i.e., the replacement of certain appliances with others that are able to help them in coping with their limitations. This paper proposes a semantic-based decision support system (DSS), which relies on ontological models, to assist designers in domestic environments’ reconfiguration. The ontology leverages semantic representations of dwellers and domestic environments’ domains of knowledge to foster the adoption of appliances able to help the residents to live independently. The development process of the ontology is presented in detail together with the results deriving from reasoning processes. To ease the reconfiguration of domestic environments, a prototypical application taking advantage of the DSS is presented.

Group Decision-Making Support for Sustainable Governance of Algal Bloom in Urban Lakes

“…For decision information processing and understanding, the semantic web can store and evaluate the cyberspace data intelligently [4,30]. Some semantic web standards have been proposed for unified data management.…”

“…Taking Beijing, China, as an example, algal bloom has occurred in Beihai Lake, Shichahai Lake, and Beihucheng River in recent years. Today, 30.7% of lakes are in the middle eutrophic degree [1] where algal bloom is highly likely. Algal bloom occurs when the eutrophication level is high.…”

ComfOnt: A Semantic Framework for Indoor Comfort and Energy Saving In Smart Homes

“…Ontologies allow formal representations of the inhabitants under different points of view. Casas et al [30] proposed a user-modeling methodology based on personas, i.e., archetypical representations of real individuals that can help designers in being aware of the information that can impact on the design of an AAL or AmI system; this approach has proven to be useful also when it comes to modeling ontologies that take into account inhabitants [31]. To overcome the problem of a static definition of the users, Castillejo, et al [32] introduced the concept of dynamic capabilities, which takes into account a user, his/her specific needs, and the characteristics of the context in which he/she operates.…”

“…In this regard, the SH needs to encompass also dwellers' data regarding their needs and health conditions, and ontologies can provide the means to formalize this non-static information. In [31,33], semantic representations of people's health conditions are used to trigger environmental adaptations, so that the environment is able to meet its occupants' needs. Following a different approach, Heckmann et al [34] revisited the General User Model Ontology (GUMO) [35], taking into account Web 2.0, thus enriching it with tags and folksonomies provided by user-generated contents on the Web.…”

“…Following an ODP described in [31] and [33], each dweller is assigned to his/her health condition, which is detailed recurring to the ICF ontology. Figure 2 provides a graphical representation of a 68-year-old dweller and his health condition, which is characterized by a severe impairment in light sensitivity (b21020) and a moderate impairment in sustaining attention (b1400).…”