Designing context-aware systems: a method for understanding and analysing context in practice (Q1734516)

The article introduces a method for recognizing relevant environmental elements defining the context where context-aware systems are intended to operate. This research was driven by a practical need experienced by the authors while working on a context-aware business-to-government (B2G) information sharing system in the domain of international container shipping. As advocated in the article, the need for such a method is instigated by the fact that such large-scale, multi-shareholder domains involve many actors with different requirements and possibly different legislations, and thus it is important to recognize which parts of the domain belong to the relevant context and should be sensed and adapted by the system. At the same time, properly identifying the context influences the design of the context-aware system allowing to directly establish what sensors and adaptors should be included. The proposed method consists of three steps: 1.) getting insight into the context; 2.) determining the components needed to sense the context and adapt to it; and 3.) determining the rules according to which the system should adapt. The paper discusses related work on context-aware systems emphasizing on various definitions of the context and representation of context information. The authors advocate that their work extends the definition of the context by clearly identifying what does belong and what does not belong to the context, thus providing a way to identify the sensors and adaptors that the system needs to fulfil its functional requirements. This also supports the identification of the rules according to which the system should adapt. The paper provides a definition of the context and uses numerous examples to illustrate logic programming concepts with domain entities from the container shipping domain. The presentation of the proposed method is also illustrated and easy to follow. Its underlying assumption is that the appropriate elements in the design of the context-aware system are those that should be sensed or manipulated in order to reach the design goal. Several strategies maximizing the efficiency of the design process are proposed.