Utilizing a Hierarchical Method to Deal with Uncertainty in Context-aware Systems

In context-aware systems, one of the main challenges is how to model context uncertainty well, since perceived context always yields uncertainty and ambiguity with consequential effect on the performance of context-aware system. To handle uncertainty in context-aware systems, firstly, we should know from where uncertainty comes. In this paper, we argue that uncertainty comes from several sources for each context level in context-aware systems. Based on this argument, we propose a hierarchical method to deal with context uncertainty in different levels, with the aim of reducing uncertainty and, developing a pattern to better understand this uncertainty. This will, in turn, helps in improving the system’s reliability.