A Layered Approach to Context-Dependent User Modelling

This works presents a method for explicit acquisition of context-dependent user preferences (preferences which change depending on a user situation, e.g., higher interest in outdoor activities if it is sunny than if it is raining) for Smart Home - intelligent environment, which recognizes contexts of its inhabitants (such as presence of people, activities, events, weather etc) via home and mobile devices and provides personalized proactive support to the users. Since a set of personally important situations, which affect user preferences, is user-dependent, and since many situations can be described only in fuzzy terms, we provide users with an easy way to develop personal context ontology and to map it fuzzily into common ontology via GUI. Backward mapping, by estimating the probability of occurrence of a user-defined situation, allows retrieval of preferences from all components of the user model (7 refs.