Privacy and the access of information in a smart house environment

Abstract

In this paper we present a framework for addressing privacy issues raised by the monitoring of assisted living smart house environments. In home environments, the conflict between the goals of the surveillance, and the private nature of the home, raises the issue of occupant privacy. This issue needs to be addressed if applications are to be accepted by the occupant. We identify four key properties required for the design of privacy sensitive ubiquitous computing applications. Subsequently, we develop a dynamic and flexible method for implementing privacy measures through controlling access to data, and an interface to provide feedback to the occupant, enabling them to control the implemented privacy measures. We form a generic framework for implementing privacy sensitive ubiquitous computing applications based on previous applications within the field. This framework was then extended and used to develop a specific framework for a privacy sensitive smart house. The approach proposed in the framework dynamically applies privacy measures to multi-modal data according to the situation, or context, of the environment. We further test an implementation of the privacy measures, and detail methods to implement feedback and control. The approach aims to decrease the invasiveness of the surveillance, while retaining the purpose of the assisted living environment.

Smart meeting systems

“…In fact, users are often anxious about themselves when they are in an environment with many sensors, since they do not know what will be captured and stored and how it will be used. Privacy mechanisms in ubiquitous computing such as in Moncrieff et al [2007] and Srinivasan et al [2008] could be explored and used in smart meeting systems.…”

Towards environment-to-environment (E2E) multimedia communication systems

“…This holistic perspective results in the Gestalt: a unified concept, a configuration that is greater than the sum of its parts. -Multimodal information fusion into higher level multidimensional index structure -Extension of multidimensional indices like HYDRA [27] -Event schema language -Based on ontology of languages such as RDF schema and OWL from the semantic web domains [35] -Privacy/ Security issues -Automated approach which is dynamic, flexible, can be feed-backed on, and allows user control [22]. Presentation& -Finding relevant yet feasible positions for display -Automatic detection of suitable surfaces for data presentation [18] Interaction -Easy tools for user to specify desired view-point -Natural interfaces like VRML based in [14] -Usability of camera switching -Eye perception studies like [33] Networking& Distribution -Best effort Internet issues like latency, congestion and availability -Exploiting correlation between different sensors to reconstruct missing information and predicting best sensors to select in near future.…”

Elderly Healthcare Monitoring Using an Avatar-Based 3D Virtual Environment

“…Advanced presentations can be applied not only to the authentic environment and avatar design, but also to illustrate other qualities, such as dynamic security levels [11]. The Smart Condo by Boers et al [12], is an example of a 3D virtual environment used to visualize information from an in-house sensor network, which can visualize the accurate location of the inhabitant as well as some activities, for example, sitting down.…”