Towards Conceptual Foundations for Context-Aware Applications

1. Towards Conceptual Foundations for Context-Aware Applications Patrícia, João Paulo, Luís, Giancarlo & Marten dockhorn@cs.utwente.nl www.cs.utwente.nl/~dockhorn ASNA Group, University of Twente

2. Introduction • Recent technologies have enabled widespread adoption of context-awareness • As applications become complex and interconnected, there is need to support the development process, which includes support for context modeling: • support common understanding, problem-solving, and communication among the various stakeholders involved in application development (Guizzardi 2005), and to • represent context unambiguously

3. Application’s Universe of Discourse • Tourist Application

4. Problem • Modeling languages, such as OWL and UML, do not offer adequate conceptual foundations (also context).  they fall short in offering suitable abstractions for constructing conceptual models (Guizzardi 2005). • We do not intend to replace these modeling languages!

5. Goal and Approach • We aim at providing basic conceptual foundations for context modeling, which allow designers of context-aware applications to represent relevant elements of a context-aware application’s universe of discourse. • We consider results from foundational ontologies to support our conceptual context modeling approaches.

6. Ontological Foundations • Moment existentially depends (inheres) on other individuals, namely their bearers. E.g., mood (inheres in a person). • Substantials do not inhere in other individuals (i.e., they are individuals which are not moments).

7. Context Categories and Entities

8. Intrinsic Context • Belongs to the essential nature of a single entity. • Is in line with the ontological concept of Intrinsic Moment Universal. • Is defined as quality, which relate to a Quality Dimension.

9. Relational Context • Inhere in a plurality of entities. • May be used to relate an entity to a collection of entities that play a role in the entity’s context.

10. Relational Context (2) • Considered Relational Moment Universal. • The relation between the bearers of a Relational Context is a Material Relation.

11. Formal Relations • Hold directly between individuals. • The immediate relata are qualities. • Examples • Greater than, taller than, older than, etc • Nearness (holds between locations). • Distance (logical construction of locations). • Contrast with Relational Context (design decision).

12. Conclusions • Conceptual modeling focuses on supporting structuring and inferential facilities that are psychologically grounded (Mylopoulos 1992). • The adequacy of conceptual context models relates to how they contributes for common understanding of context among the stakeholders of a context-aware application (e.g., users and designers). • Most approaches already consider technology aspects in the first phase of design trajectory (do not benefit from conceptual modeling).

13. Future Work • Bridge the gap between conceptual models and context information models. • Modeling situations (high level context). We are looking at conceptual graphs theories. • Include temporal aspects (perdurants).

14. References • Guizzardi, G., Herre, H., and Wagner, G. 2002. On the General Ontological Foundations of Conceptual Modeling. • Guizzardi, G. 2005. Ontological Foundations for Structural Conceptual Models. PhD Thesis, University of Twente, The Netherlands. Heller, B., and Herre, H. 2004 Ontological Categories in GOL. Axiomathes 14:71-90 Kluwer Academic Publishers. • Mylopoulos, J. 1992. Conceptual modeling and Telos. • Mulligan, K., and Smith, B. 1986. A Relational theory of the Act. Topoi (5/2), 115-30. • Masolo, C., Borgo, S., Gangemi, A., Guarino, N., and Oltramari, A. 2003. Ontology Library. WonderWeb D18. • Sowa, J.F. 1984. Conceptual Structures: Information Processing in Mind and Machine, Addison-Wesley, NY.