Integrating multiple contexts and ontologies in a pervasive computing framework

There is a commonly accepted need for contexts and ontologies to describe the vast amounts of data that are available to pervasive computing applications. Existing contexts and ontologies are either very generalised, very application specific, or inflexible. An integrated approach is required in which new concepts can be added and related to existing ones transparently. This paper describes a novel approach to the design of a set of contexts and ontologies for context-aware pervasive computing systems. It describes a Query Service, that lies between applications and contextual information, which complemented by the contexts and ontologies, offers a more powerful query answering service to application developers than is currently available.