When the context changes, so does my transportation application: VESPA

The notion of context has become very important in computer science, especially when mobility of users is involved. For humans, it is instinctive to adapt to our environment, to the people around us, or to the situation. It becomes less evident regarding our computational devices. If we consider handheld devices (e.g., smartphones) that are available today, we can notice a wide choice of applications, some of which have started to take context into account. But research in this domain is still very active, as deciding what information influences which application is a complex problem. The work presented in this paper focuses on the transportation domain and more particularly on applications designed to assist the user in transportation activities (e.g., driving, visiting a city, ...). As multiple applications should react in a similar way to the context changes, we propose a framework for their execution and context management. In this paper we present a case study related to the VESPA system, designed to assist drivers by providing them diverse information (e.g., traffic information, available parking spaces, etc.), by showing how it can help dealing with context issues.