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of the five analysed interoperability mod-
els. Conceptual barriers were related to
the syntactic and/or semantic differences
of exchanged information. Technological
barriers were related to the incompatibility
of information technologies.
how to manage them. In summary, the strength
of C4IF is in its simplicity and mappings to exist-
ing technologies. LCIM lacks concrete examples
of existing common technologies that can be used
for realizing the interoperability levels. The three
upper levels (conceptual, dynamic and prag-
matic) do not have a particular clear separation
of concerns, nor proposals how to address them
in the designs of interoperability. However, these
two models were selected as they have the largest
coverage on interoperability and they, together,
provide all of the views of interoperability that
smart spaces have to deal with.
Our design approach addresses the following
types of interoperability, explained further in the
next section:
To summarize, none of the five interoperability
models as such are suitable for our purposes. The
interoperability models LISI and LCIM - the only
ones that focus on data and/or service interoper-
ability - have conceptual and technical barriers
that hinder their adoption for the development
of smart spaces.
The Connection, Communication, Consolida-
tion, Collaboration Interoperability Framework
(C4IF) (Peristeras & Tarabanis, 2006) exploits
the concepts of language theories, such as the
language form, syntax, meaning and the use of
symbols and interpretations. C4IF separates the
interoperability levels based on the communica-
tion type, focus and substance. The C4IF model
is compared to the LCIM model in Table 1. As
it can be seen, although the definitions of these
interoperability models are different, they have
many similarities in terms of focus, substance
and communication type. When systems need
to be integrated, the focus is on the network
and connectivity. Thereafter, interoperability is
considered on the levels of the data, the meaning
of the data, the context and the meaning of the
context. Modeling and implementation are the
means for achieving interoperability on these
levels, whereas abstraction and modeling are the
means of handling interoperability on the level
of behavior.
The main difference between the C4IF and
LCIM models derives from their origins. C4IF,
which has its origin in language theories, makes
it easy to understand the four levels of interoper-
ability. Thus, it is a valuable vehicle for commu-
nication. LCIM originates from intelligent sys-
tems, and it provides a more comprehensive
understanding of the various aspects of data and
•
The meaning of data; an ability of the in-
teroperability platform to understand data
based on schemas derived from ontology;
information is used as an object of integra-
tion; the usage of data is separated from the
data.
•
Context; an ability of the interoperability
platform to understand a shared context
specification.
•
The meaning of context changes; an ability
of the interoperability platform to under-
stand context changes.
•
Behavior; an ability of smart space ap-
plications to understand their scopes of
the shared meaning of behaviors/actions
which are required in a smart space in a
situation at hand.
Context Awareness in Smart Spaces
The open issues of smart spaces relate to the
need to i) minimize information communication/
processing overheads and ii) adapt the behavior
of smart applications to changing conditions in
their operational environment. Since informa-
tion overheads have an impact on performance,
smart applications should avoid exchanging and
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