Ontology Based Semantic Web for Building Context-Aware Pervasive Environment

Emerging pervasive computing solutions provide “anytime, anywhere” computing by decoupling users from devices and viewing applications as entities that perform tasks on users’ behalf. Context-aware systems provide mechanisms for developing applications that are aware of environments and able to adapt to changing contexts seamlessly. Context-aware computing has attracted much attention from researchers in recent years, and several context-aware systems have been developed to demonstrate the technology’s usefulness. However, building context-aware applications is complex and time-consuming due to inadequate infrastructure support. To manage the context information systematically, the framework entities must have a common structure for representing information.

In this article, we propose an ontology-based context model that leverages Semantic Web technology and OWL (Web Ontology Language). Our work differs from and perhaps outperforms previous work in several respects. Using the Semantic Web standard OWL to define context ontology provides a foundation for building interoperable smart spaces where computing entities can easily exchange and interpret contexts.