Towards a common context model for virtual community applications

Instrumentation of home appliances and devices with sensors and actuators enables the creation of smart, context-aware environments which can intelligently support users in a variety of tasks, including tasks that support independent living of the elderly. This paper describes how the complexity associated with designing and implementing context-aware applications can be reduced through both context reuse and programming methods that allow context evaluation to be decoupled from applications. The paper describes a family of applications for smart homes that fall into the category of virtual community applications for the elderly, and demonstrates that these applications can be supported by a common, evolvable set of context and preference models.