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We explain basic features of an emerging area called Intelligent Environments. We give a short overview on how it has developed, what is the current state of the art and what are the challenges laying ahead. The aim of the article is to make aware the Computer Science community of this new development, the differences with previous dominant paradigms and the opportunities that this area offers to the scientific community and society. Basic conceptsHere we explain how the area of Intelligent Environments (IE) has developed, what its core values are and how it differs from other areas. By "Environment" we refer here to any space in our surroundings. Although some people may also consider virtual environments here we mostly refer to Physical spaces, in all its diversity, e.g., house, building, street, a field, an area in the sea or space, etc. Our use of the word "Intelligent" applied to Environments mostly refers to Artificial Intelligence, as defined in [1]. An Intelligent Environment is one in which the actions of numerous networked controllers (controlling different aspects of an environment) is orchestrated by self-programming pre-emptive processes (e.g., intelligent software agents) in such a way as to create an interactive holistic functionality that enhances occupants experiences. Historical development of the areaFor centuries humans have witnessed scientific and technological leaps that changed the lives of their generation, and those to come, forever. We are no exception. In fact many of those advances are occurring now, in a more or less unperceivable way. Slowly and silently technology is becoming interwoven in our lives in the form of a variety of devices which are starting to be used by people of all ages and as part of their daily routine. As predicted by M. Weiser [2], this technology is gradually disappearing from our cognitive front, as we increasingly take for granted its existence. But this fact alone could not justify a paradigm shift, as we claim in this manifesto.The emergence of a new paradigm requires the convergence of various domains of human activity, many of which are not technological. It is true that numerous technological advances have taken place during the past two decades worldwide, mainly due to persistent efforts by researchers and systematic funding by governments and markets. Among these advances one could site:

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Context-awareness is an essential component of systems developed in areas like Intelligent Environments, Pervasive & Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence. In these emerging fields, there is a need for computerized systems to have a higher understanding of the situations in which to provide services or functionalities, to adapt accordingly. The literature shows that researchers modify existing engineering methods in order to better fit the needs of context-aware computing. These efforts are typically disconnected from each other and generally focus on solving specific development issues. We encourage the creation of a more holistic and unified engineering process that is tailored for the demands of these systems. For this purpose, we study the state-of-the-art in the development of context-aware systems, focusing on: A) Methodologies for developing context-aware systems, analysing the reasons behind their lack of adoption and features that the community wish they can use; B) Context-aware system engineering challenges and techniques applied during the most common development stages; C) Context-aware systems conceptualization.

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