An ontology-based context management and reasoning process for UbiComp applications

UbiComp applications operate within an extremely dynamic and heterogeneous environment and have to dynamically adapt to changes in their environment as a result of users' or other actors' activities. So context definition, representation, management and use become important factors that affect their operation. To ease the development of such applications it is necessary to decouple application composition from context acquisition and representation, and at the same time provide universal models and mechanisms to manage context. In this paper is presented an approach for building a context-aware UbiComp system organised in hierarchical levels. The focus of the paper is on an ontology-based context modelling, management and reasoning process developed for composing context-aware UbiComp applications from AmI artefacts.