Toward assessing Quality of Context parameters in a ubiquitous assisted environment

This paper provides an approach to assessing Quality of Context (QoC) parameters in a ubiquitous Ambient Assisted Living (ALL) environment. Lack of quality can lead assisted systems to respond inappropriately, resulting in errors related to assistance or support, or putting the user at risk. QoC assessments can improve these systems and set them to perform specific actions whenever lapses in quality occur. Initially, the study presents a literature review of QoC. Then it introduces the context management architecture used. The proposal is verified with the Siafu simulator in an ALL scenario where the user's health is monitored with information about blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. Considering some parameters, the proposed QoC assessment shall allow verifying the extent to which the context information is up-to-date, valid, accurate, complete and significant. Assessing QoC parameters and the QoC value is important and helpful to detect anomalies or inconsistencies in sensors, generate alerts, activate backup sensors, discard data with insufficient QoC, choose appropriate providers, etc.