Service-Oriented Architectures for Context-Aware Information Retrieval and Access

Humans are quite successful at conveying ideas to each other and retrieving information from interactions appropriately. This is due to many factors: the richness of the language they share, the common understanding of how the world works, and an implicit understanding of everyday situations (Dey & Abowd, 1999). When humans talk with humans, they are able to use implicit situational information (i.e., context) to enhance the information exchange process. Context (Cool & Spink, 2002) plays a vital part in adaptive and personalized information retrieval and access. Unfortunately, computer communications lacks this ability to provide auxiliary context in addition to the substantial content of information. As computers are becoming more and more ubiquitous and mobile, there is a need and possibility to provide information “personalized, any time, and anywhere” (ITU, 2006). In these scenarios, large amounts of information circulate in order to create smart and proactive environments that will significantly enhance both the work and leisure experiences of people. Context-awareness plays an important role to enable personalized information retrieval and access according to the current situation with minimal human intervention. Although context-aware information retrieval systems have been researched for a decade (Korkea-aho, 2000), the rise of mobile and ubiquitous computing put new challenges to issue, and therefore we are motivated to come up with new solutions to achieve non-intrusive, personalized information access on the mobile service platforms and heterogeneous wireless environments.

Access Control in Mobile and Ubiquitous Environments

Access control is the process of granting permissions in accordance to an authorization policy. Mobile and ubiquitous environments challenge classical access control solutions like Role-Based Access Control. The use of context-information during policy definition and access control enforcement offers more adaptability and flexibility needed for these environments. When it comes to low-power devices, such as wireless sensor networks, access control enforcement is normally too heavy for such resource-constrained devices. Lightweight cryptography allows encrypting the data right from its production and the access is therefore intrinsically restricted. In addition, all access control mechanisms require an authenticated user. Traditionally, user authentication is performed by means of a combination of authentication factors, statically specified in the access control policy of the authorization service. Within ubiquitous and mobile environment, there is a clear need for a flexible user authentication using the available authentication factors. In this chapter, different new techniques to ensure access control are discussed and compared to the state-of-the-art.

Deciphering Pervasive Computing

Pervasive computing and communications is emerging rapidly as an exciting new paradigm and discipline to provide computing and communication services all the time and everywhere. Its systems are now invading every aspect of life to the point that they are disappearing inside all sorts of appliances or can be worn unobtrusively as part of clothing and jewelry. This emergence is a natural outcome of research and technological advances in wireless networks, embedded systems, mobile computing, distributed computing, and agent technologies. At the same time, this emergence brings challenging issues to the legal framework surrounding it. As well recognized, law is a discipline that has direct relevance to human behaviour and its adjoining environment. Thus, a study of law can be a study of the living environment and the people who are in it. This surely brings difficulties for us to study the law in a future scenario such as pervasive computing environment. Attempting to forecast the future of law, technology, and human behavior is a very risky proposition. Hence, it is impossible to fully discuss topics such as “legal aspects of pervasive computing”. This chapter aims to provide a general observation of various legal issues connecting with pervasive computing technologies. To avoid a skeleton introduction piece, the main part of this chapter concentrates on three particular issues: Jurisdiction and the choice of law issue, electronic fraud issue, and the privacy issue. These three are unsettled issues in the current computing environment and believed to become more complicated and controversial in the near future with a wider adoption of ubiquitous computing technology. In the end, this chapter suggests that, to serve the future computing environment better, the legal and regulatory framework should focus on the improvement of internal monitoring of risks and vulnerabilities greater information sharing about these risks and vulnerabilities. Moreover, the role of government should focus on education and training on the care and use of these technologies and better reporting of risks and responses. A fully embedded computing environment that is safe and sound to live in will need more collaboration between individuals, commercial organizations, and the government.

Privacy Factors for Successful Ubiquitous Computing

Certain privacy principles have been established by industry, (e.g. USCAM, 2006). Over the past two years, we have been trying to understand whether such principles reflect the concerns of the ordinary citizen. We have developed a method of enquiry which displays a rich context to the user in order to elicit more detailed information about those privacy factors that underpin our acceptance of ubiquitous computing. To investigate use and acceptance Videotaped Activity Scenarios specifically related to the exchange of health, financial, shopping and e-voting information and a large scale survey were used. We present a detailed analysis of user concerns firstly in terms of a set of constructs that might reflect user-generated privacy principles; secondly those factors likely to play a key role in an individual’s cost-benefit analysis and thirdly, longer-term concerns of the citizen in terms of the impact of new technologies on social engagement and human values.

Pervasive Business Infrastructure

In a climate of concern in the United Kingdom about a perceived loss of interest in science among schoolchildren and the general public, we consider the relationships that exist between science education and public engagement in science, and “formal” and “informal” learning contexts. The authors move on to describe four case studies drawn from our research, where mobile technologies have been used in ubiquitous ICT based science-related learning activities. Three of these studies were of school based activities which took place in timetabled science lesson time. The fourth was set in Kew Gardens in London, during a holiday period, and involved leisure-time visitors of all ages. Finally, they describe a planned integrated trial, which will draw together “formal” and “informal” learners in environmental and scientific debate, scaffolding previous mobile learning experiences towards a genuinely multiplatform e-learning system.

Impact of RFID Technology on Health Care Organizations

RFID technologies represent a common standard for data storage and retrieval that could improve collaboration and data sharing between noncompeting organizations. With the advent of RFID (radio frequency identification), organizations have the opportunity to rethink how their organization will be. Unlike companies in the United States and Europe which are mandated by large retailers or government departments, most Taiwan companies are investing in RFID without pressure. The article explores the factor affecting radio frequency identification adoption applications in Taiwan. Its objective is to summarize the ways in which organizations are thinking about their possible uses in a wide variety of companies and industries. An empirical investigation (n=134) found seven factors affecting RFID adoption within Taiwan. They are operation efficiency, manufacturing efficiency and supply chain efficiency, organization context, investment cost, market environment, and technology characteristic. By providing insight into these important factors, this article can help further understanding of their role in the adoption and use of RFID. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

Intelligent Supply Chain Management with Automatic Identification Technology

RFID-enabled business models are proposed in this chapter to innovate supply chain management. The models demonstrated benefits from automatically captured real-time information in supply chain operations. The resulting visibility creates chances to operate businesses in more responsive, dynamic, and efficient scenarios. The actual initiative of such novel RFID enabled applications is therefore to encourage intelligent supply chain management to dynamically respond changes and events in real-time. As the RFID implementation costs are continuously decreasing, it is expected that more novel business models would be inspired by the technological advancement to foster more intelligent supply chains in the near future.

Inscribing Interpretive Flexibility of Context Data in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

Ubiquitous access and pervasive computing concept is almost intrinsically tied to wireless communications. Emerging next-generation wireless networks enable innovative service access in every situation. Apart from many remote services, proximity services will also be widely available. People currently rely on numerous forms of identities to access these services. The inconvenience of possessing and using these identities creates significant security vulnerability, especially from network and device point of view in wireless service access. After explaining the current identity solutions scenarios, the chapter illustrates the on-going efforts by various organizations, the requirements and frameworks to develop an innovative, easy-to-use identity management mechanism to access the future diverse service worlds. The chapter also conveys various possibilities, challenges, and research questions evolving in these areas.

Identity Management for Wireless Service Access

In a digital home a so-called multi-play system integrates networked entertainment and communications systems. Using a mobile phone, all those services can be controlled and used ubiquitously—from everywhere, at any time. Not much research has been conducted in the field of integrated communication offers. The novelty of this study is in that it addresses the ubiquitous communication system, called the multi-play service, from the perspectives of both the customer preference and operator strategy and transforms this into valuation of resources and capabilities. This chapter provides a framework to connect the customer value preferences to firm resources. The aim of the framework is to connect customer and resource-based strategies together. As a result of the analysis the authors reveal the most important resources in contrast to the customer value preferences.

Adapting to the User

Pervasive computers cover many areas of both our working and personal lives. This chapter investigates this phenomenon through the human factors impacts, particularly in aviation. This chapter gives a brief introduction to pervasive computers and how they interact with aviation human factors research. Further, it follows the discussion on how pervasive computers have permeated into an integral part of the aviation industry by reviewing the specific issues of cockpit automation and the human-machine interface in the aircraft cockpit.