Context Aware Messaging and Addressing for Emergency

Applications

Alaa Almagrabi, Seng Loke, Torab Torabi 

Department of Computer Science and Computer EngineeringLa Trobe University

Outline

• Research aim and Objectives• Background • Related work • Discussion• Proposal • Spatial modeling for emergency systems• System ontology• Conclusion

Research Aims• We aim to investigate context-aware messaging and

addressing for emergency situations . • Assist-Me is an emergency alert that will be activate to help

avoiding disaster. • Outdoor emergency systems refer to the measures that we put

in place in order to help us effectively deal with disasters within the society

• Investigating context models is required for designing efficient and expressive messaging and addressing services.

Objectives of literature survey • Investigate the concept of context aware messaging and addressing.• Presents an overview some common applications that use context-aware

messaging. • The context aware messaging applications that are used for

emergency purposes. • smart bushfire monitoring and detection system using GSM

technology• A bushfire monitoring and detection system for smart homes

using ZigBee technology • The context-aware messaging applications that used for guides and

reminders. • ComMotion, Cybre-Minder, Elvin…etc

• The context aware messaging applications for social purposes which includes: communication and interaction between people.• Context-Mediated Social Awareness, Live Contacts, Micro-Blog,

InfoRadar…etc

Background• Context awareness is more than twenty years old (Coppola, et.

al., 2005).• Context-awareness is a key aspect of new applications in the

field of ubiquitous computing.• Mobile and ubiquitous computing environments can now

match and even replace traditional desktop computing. • Chen and Kotz 2000, discuss the relation between context-

aware computing and mobile computing model in which applications can determine and take advantage of contextual information.

• Contextual information can be used as an alternative to old fashion addressing techniques such IP addresses for communication purposes (Geiger, et. al., 2009).

• Schilit et. al., (1994) divides context into three categories: i. Computing context.ii. User context.iii. Physical context.• Chen and Kotz (2000) continued that work and introduced

fourth category of context called time.• Dey et. al., 1999 define context as any information that can be

used to distinguish the situation of an entity, where entity can be a person, place, or object that is considered relevant to the interaction between the user and application.

• Schmidt et al., (2002) defines context as “knowledge about the user’s and IT device’s state, including surroundings, situation, and to a less extent, location”.

What is Context?

• The basic aim of context awareness is to provide computers with situational information in order to execute tasks.

• Context awareness aim can be found as the use of any information related to the user’s situation and surrounding in order for the application to progress and execute a task (Dey’s, 2001).

• Haseloff (2005) defines the aim of context awareness as “providing computers with situational or contextual information as a result of which they accordingly adapt the execution of tasks and the way of interacting with users”.

Context Aim

Related work:Applications use Context-Aware Messaging

Figure. A classification of context-aware messaging application

Context-aware messaging in Emergency Applications

Application type Technology Architecture Usage Context model

A smart bushfire Monitoring and detection system (Rong et al. 2010).

emergency application

GSM telephones and GPS receiver.Sensor, microcontroller and power supply

hybrid SMS format sensors for location, temperature and humidity

A bushfire monitoring and detection system for smart homes (Sun et al. 2010).

emergency application

ZigBee modules: GSM modem and GPS receiver.Sensor, microcontroller and power supply

hybrid SMS format sensors for location, temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction

Context Aware Applications for Reminder, Guidance and Notification  

Application type Technology Architecture Usage Context model

ComMotion (Marmasse and Schmandt, 2000).

notification and guidance

GPS, Web-Server, CDPD and Data Mapping

centralized present graphical and textual interface to allow messaging

location using sensor and GPS and time

Cybre-Minder (Anind and Gregory 2000).

notification and guidance

Context-Toolkit, CRB, Sensors

centralized text, audio, video and multimedia

contextual information;location using sensor and GPS, time and nearby people …etc

Elvin (Loke and Zaslavsky 2003)

notification and guidance

Mobile agent, Server, ACL communicative

centralized text can be integers, floating point, Strings etc

location using GPS , time and event (message content)

The PIL museum Visitor’s Guide System (Kuflik et al. 2007)

notification and guidance

IR and Wi-Fi centralized messaging, guide book, conversation and presentation

location using IR and Wi-Fi, time and contextual states

Context-Aware Messaging in Social Network Applications with Single-Context

Application type Technology Architecture Usage Context model

Socialight (Melinger et al. 2004)

Social network: Communication and collaboration

uses different social networks, GPS and Bluetooth beacons

client server message can be text, audio, video, and multimedia associated with geographical map

location of friend within the network

Context aware group communication system (Jou and Wang, 2006)

Social network: Communication and Collaboration

the client uses HP iPAQ hx2410 Pocket PCs and the server side is Fedora Core 2 Linux-Wireless network

client server mobile messaging technique to send or view the message

location of mobile user to present basic group communication

Context-Aware Messaging in Social Network Applications with Double-Context

Application type Technology Architecture Usage Context model

Micro-Blog (Gaonkar et al. 2008)

Social network: Communication and collaboration

J2ME and Nokia N95 for client side, the server is built using MySQL, WirelessAnd Google Maps or Microsoft Sensor Map

hybrid sharing, browsing, and querying global information in SMS format and Photos

location and time of the device

InfoRadar (Rantanen et al. 2004)

Social network: Communication and Collaboration

PDA, GPS and radar metaphor

centralized text message: SMS format and multimedia elements

location of mobile phone and time which represent lifespan

Context-Aware Messaging in Social Network Applications with Multi-Context

 

Application type Technology Architecture Usage Context model

Context mediated social awareness (Bardram and Hansen, 2004)

Social network: Communication and collaboration

PDA for the client and GPRS to communicate with server

hybrid messaging:text, audio, video, multimedia

the messaging time, the user’s location, personal status, and activity

Context aware communication with Live Contacts (Hofte et al. 2004)

Social Network: Communication and collaboration

the clients implemented in C# , the server is Microsoft.NET and uses GPRS to connect with GSM

hybrid Messaging technique (text, voice, video, multimedia)

location, time from the user, instant messaging status, current and near future calendar appointments, and color coded availability

Application type Technology Architecture Usage Context model

Using semantic web technology for ubiquitous location modeling(Stahl and Heckmann, 2004)

Social network: Communication and Collaboration

Mobile, IR- GPS, sensors,Semantic OWL, Yamamoto and URIs

hybrid provide text information, presentation of audio and visual media output

location, User characteristics, any situational context (event, objects) and Map

Framework for mobile context based messaging applications(Antti and Timo, 2007)

Social network: Communication and collaboration

J2ME, XML, JSR-179 Location API and GPS locator device.

centralized Text message: SMS format and Multimedia elements

location, time and Application services

Context-Aware Messaging in Social Network Applications with Multi-Context

• In summary, the number of types of context being used in the application varies with time to time and with application to application.

• In recently year we notice that the use of the number of different types of context in applications increased significantly as compare to the previous years.

 

• Emergency systems refer to the measures that we put in place in order to help us effectively deal with disasters within the society

• Modern technology such as remote sensing with the use of wireless devices increases the chances of detecting slight changes in the environment.

• The use modern technology in disaster management simplifies decision making saving time and providing help where necessary .

Proposal for Assist-Me System

Spatial relations (Enclosing Space)

• Spatial data models where the use of geographic information system (GIS) in providing information concerning current events is increasingly attracting global interest in a number of fields.

• spatial can be anything that are related to a certain area or space not necessary physically geographic such as the human activities as going to the farm.

• Spatial awareness allows the system to autonomously resolve and use its spatial properties to relate these properties to the spatial properties of other systems

Typical Disaster Scenario

Flooding Scenario

The Spatial Relation between Clients

Figure8. The Server Grouping the Clients 

The Spatial Relation between Clients and Danger Zones

Figure $. The Relation between the Clients and the Danger Zones.

100mRed Zone

300mBlue Zone

200mYellow Zone

FIREClient in Red ZoneClient in Yellow ZoneClient in Blue Zone

The Spatial Relation between Clients and Rescuers

Figure . The Relation between Clients and Rescuer

Client

Rescuer

The Spatial Relation between Clients and Main Points of Interest

Figure . The Relation between Clients and Main Points of Interest

System Ontology

has_

locati

onActors

Region 

White_zone

Point_of_interest

Danger_zone

Cont

ains

has_

location

has_location

has_

locationhas_location

has_location

Emergency_Situation

Stage

has_stage

involves

1

*

1 1

11 *1

**

11

*

*

* 1

Figure . The System General Ontology

Future work

• Developing the ontology.

• Evaluating the ontology.

• Implementation & performance measurements.

Thank you