Keynote speaker I: Ubiquitous sensing

Abstract

Ubiquitous sensing applications often involve the sensor based data collection with a large coverage in space in and time. From a return on investment perspective the value of information needs to be attractive with the cost of infrastructure to acquire it. The role of participative sensing and human centric sensing has been widely explored for collecting and analyzing data for use in social science, environmental and health applications. The wide availability of smart phones integrated with variety of sensors is becoming platform for people to document a neighborhood, gather evidence, study behaviors and is accelerating the pace of exploration in new application areas. Many of the current applications involve the monitoring of public spaces involving the participation of citizen in general. Participative surveillance is an application that can bring substantial social benefit. There are many challenges in effectively deploying such applications. It includes the privacy issues, trustworthiness of the data, human factors that affect the quality of sensing, variability of devices, enrolling and motivating participants, and a sustainable business model. Further it should be supported with a sound framework for deployment where the participant has control over data, transparency in data handling and intuitive user interface supporting multi-modal interactions. This presentation will discuss the above aspects with a few illustrative use case scenarios.