THE DYNAMIC ADAPTATION OF POLICIES IN UBIQUITOUS ENVIRONMENTS, WITH CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION AS THE CATALYST

This report proposes a policy refinement process design specifically to assist in the management of ubiquitous environments. The principal intent of these environments is to provide user-centric services, devices, interfaces and information. This objective together with other characteristics of ubiquitous environments, namely volatility, invisibility, heterogeneity and accessibility, introduces new and redirects existing management challenges. The flexibility of policy-based management makes it an attractive approach on which to develop an architecture that supports the management of ubiquitous computing environments. The proposed policy refinement architecture uses system requirements along with applicable context information to respond, in an adequate and timely manner, to changes in the underlying infrastructure, user requirements and system requirements.