Context Modeling for Urban Mobile Applications

Urban settings are host of diverse networking technologies, from 3G and wired broadband to Wi-Fi, WiMAX, Bluetooth and, more recently, sensor networks. Potentially, these co-existing networks can provide rich inputs to mobile applications that are context aware. To date, the vast majority of context-aware mobile applications are specialized, e.g. healthcare and tourism, and they lack generality and adaptability. It is therefore essential to use a context model that will match the requirements of a large range of future urban networks applications. The question addressed by this paper is to propose an appropriate context model that is general enough to be effective for urban settings, the challenge being to provide the context-aware service to a wide variety of mobile applications across all networks. This paper presents an analysis of existing models, introduces the O+L model (ontologies plus logic) adopted by the authors, the original service architecture that supports the model and its qualitative evaluation.