Context Recognition: Towards Automatic Query Generation

In this paper, we present an ontology-based approach in designing knowledge model for context recognition (CR) systems. The main focus in this paper is on the use of an ontology to facilitate the generation of user-based queries to the CR system. By leveraging from the ontology, users need not know about sensor details and the structure of the ontology in expressing queries related to events of interest. To validate the approach and demonstrate the flexibility of the ontology for query generation, the ontology has been integrated in two separate application domains. The first domain considers a health care system implemented for the GiraffPlus project where the query generation process is automated to request information about activities of daily living. The second application uses the same ontology for an air quality monitoring application in the home. Since these two systems are independently developed for different purposes, the ease of applying the ontology upon them can be considered as a credit for its generality.