An architecture for user-centric management of intelligent environments

Ubiquitous computing environments are intelligent environments that have a wide array of embedded sensors and other artefacts that provide information regarding the current state of the physical environment. Utilisation of such information, known as context information has the potential to alter the natural surroundings of users in order to adapt the environment to suit the user's needs and assist in their tasks. These alterations in the environment should occur both transparently and seamlessly in order to minimise the impact on user's attention in such a way that the user's focus is not shifted from the task at hand. Satisfying user requirements in this manner, particularly in an environment that is so complex and dynamic raises a multitude of challenges. It is our belief that these challenges can be attributed to three distinct domains, namely management of personal information and management of context information combined with policy based management system. In the proposed paper we describe a management architecture for these intelligent environments that, through coordinated invocation of system and user policies triggered through the analysis of context information, taking into account business goals, can achieve a balance between user's desires and intentions while upholding system constraints.