User’s Profile Representation for Distributed Systems

Nowadays, computing systems are used and integrated in different ways into our daily life. In pervasive environments, they give users the ability to get access to the information anywhere at any time, which leads to a dynamic evolution in the user context. However, those systems should be aware of this evolution and adapt their behavior accordingly, to meet the user needs and preferences. In this paper, we present a hybrid user context model for the pervasive environment following a layered architecture. Each layer describes one functional aspect of context management. We combine between graphical representations, logic expressions and Semantic Web technologies to describe and search for user context. Our model enables model specializations to particular domains and context sharing with external applications. Finally, this paper shows specific prototypes that offer personalized and context-aware information to the user.