*** Adaptable Smart Environments for Elderly People ***
An imminent and sharp increase of elderly population is forecasted around the world, inducing human, social and economical impacts. Progressive degradation of vision, hearing, mobility and cognitive skills deprives elderly people from the possibility of independently performing Activities of Daily Living and engaging in social interaction, and often leads to reliance on services in special care facilities. Although several technological solutions could assist them, existing solutions do not fulfill the sporadic needs of the different elderly people and their continuously changing environments. My goal is to provide adapted assistive services in adaptive Smart Environments that can play a significant role in maintaining decent Quality of Life (QoL) for elderly people.
I have applied Context-awareness to adapt and provision assistive services according to user profile and surrounding environments. The next agenda in my research is to provide continuity of assistive services that adapt to changing user conditions and environments while ensuring successful system execution. Therefore, the following challenges will be addressed in my program: how to design systems that enable continuity of service, how to model environment Context for such system, how to guarantee successful system execution, and how to adapt services according to aging process.
My program will have significant impacts on the way healthcare is delivered and on socioeconomic development. The anticipated output of the program is the opening of new avenues for elderly assistance, promoting active aging and improving QoL of elderly people. My work, in close collaboration with caregivers and domain experts, will lead to concrete solutions that a) enable seniors to remain longer in their own communities, b) relieve caregivers and allow them to provide quality care, and 3) decrease the costs and pressures on the health system.