Collaborative Data Gathering using Context-aware Mobile Devices

The popularity of Internet-enabled mobile technology allows people to participate in many data gathering tasks such as making scientific observation, responding to regional polls, and collecting location-specific information such as parking availability and road conditions. Reaching users on their mobile devices poses challenges regarding appropriate user selection and user's state to respond to any data queries. We present a context-aware framework to support collaborative data gathering applications. The framework uses Semantic Web languages to represent and reason about mobile sensor data, user context and preferences. The framework allows information seekers to forward data requests to appropriate users based on their context information. In addition, we discuss the importance of discovering a high level conceptual place information as opposed to geographical position and provide ways to extract this information.

• Dr. Tim Finin (Chair)
• Dr. Yelena Yesha
• Dr. Anupam Joshi
• Dr. Lauda Zavala