An ontology-based approach to context modeling and reasoning in pervasive computing

The behavior of pervasive applications should depend not only on their internal state and user interactions but also on the context sensed during their execution. In this paper, we propose an ontology-based generic context management (GCoM) model. The GCoM model facilitates context reasoning by providing structure for contexts, rules and their semantics. Context and context semantics in GCoM model are represented using the upper and the lower level ontology. Rules are represented using ontology compatible rule languages. Even though ontology data has static nature, GCoM model is designed to be dynamic and reusable in multiple domains of pervasive applications where resource limitation is a key issue. Initial prototype of the use of the model is created and the result obtained is promising.