Urbancontext: a Management Model for Pervasive Environments in User-Oriented Urban Computing

Nowadays, urban computing has gained a lot of interest in regards to guiding the evolution of cities into intelligent environments. These environments can be appropriated for interactions between individuals that may ultimately affect and modify their behavior. These changes require new approaches that allow us to better understand how urban computing systems should be modeled. In this work, we present UrbanContext – a new model for designing urban computing platforms that applies the theory of roles to manage the individual’s context in urban environments. The theory of roles helps us understand the individual’s behavior within a social environment, allowing us to model urban computing systems capable of adapting to an individual’s states and needs. In order to optimize social interaction and offer secure services, UrbanContext collects data in urban atmospheres and classifies behavior according to the individual’s change of roles. Likewise, UrbanContext serves as a generic model to provide interoperability as well as facilitate design, implementation, and expansion of urban computing systems.