Context-Aware Services for Ambient Environments

This article presents the iTransIT framework for building context-aware pervasive services in large-scale ambient environments. The iTransIT framework provides an architecture for conceptually integrating the independent systems underlying an ambient environment and a data model for capturing the contextual information generated by these systems. The data model is based on a hybrid approach to context-modeling that incorporates the management and communication benefits of traditional object-based-context modeling with the semantic and inference advantages of ontology-based context modeling. The iTransIT framework furthermore supports a programming model designed to provide a standardized way to access and correlate information from systems and their devices based on context and ultimately, to build context-aware ambient services. The framework has been assessed based on a prototypical realization of an architecture for integrating diverse intelligent transportation systems in Dublin and by building context-aware ambient transportation services for urban journey planning and for visualizing traffic congestion.