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Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp), as envisaged by Weiser [22], is heavily user-centric and largely concerned with applications specifically designed to meet end-user needs. Sensor populated ubicomp environments differentiate these applications from existing mobile and distributed systems through context awareness.For the system developer, the problems of heterogeneity and scalability are felt most keenly when designing this adaptive behaviour. A context-aware ubicomp system needs to operate reliably over the wide variety of situations that may be encountered. In this paper we present a technical architecture which has been implemented to support scalable, cost-effective, runtime experimentation using a framework of models to support informed decision making in an iterative design cycle.

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Research on context aware systems is handicapped by the lack of readily available large scale data sets, as well as by the lack of tools by which researchers can interact effectively with such data sets across a range of scales and granularities. We show how virtual reality combined with a dynamical systems analysis approach can start to address these gaps. Simulation allows for generation of simulated sensor data at runtime and actuations of entities in the virtual world. The ease of sensor deployment and configurations in a simulated environment allows for rapid reconfigurations enabling generation of the required large scale data sets for analysis. Using these data sets, dynamical systems analysis can determine if a given application is functioning in a manner that is deemed to be correct.