CASA - Context-Aware Service Access

Abstract

With the widespread of mobile Internet-enabled devices we can consider nearly every user everywhere as a potential consumer of cloud services. Especially campus environments provide a multitude of heterogeneous scientific information and services to the users. Here different problems arise concerning the integration and dissemination of cloud services and resources. While location is usually considered as the core context for mobile service access, its value is very limited in evolving large-scale smart environments with a multitude of user roles, tasks, devices and services. This is even more challenging if multiple users work collaboratively in remote locations on the same project. Therefore, we propose with CASA, Context- Aware Service Access, a concept which can use different kinds of context as source and provides support for reactive and proactive actions based on the current situation. The evolving and changing aspects are handled with an extensive usage of crowdsourcing to encourage a decentralized and user-driven development. This shall lead to a novel open and extendable recommender system which also supports the adaption and integration of cloud-based services according to the situation. Additionally, as proof of concept, we present two use cases for smart campus and smart lecture rooms.