The unified profile: applying user profile data within intelligent environments

The relatively mature field of User Profiling is mostly confined to the desktop and the WWW, where the data sources and profiles themselves tend to be textual in nature. The aim of this paper is to offer a method which unifies these profiles and their corresponding data with non-textual data from within an Intelligent Environment. We aim to combine data available from within a physical environment with that of a logical environment, applying physical and logical context to an information space. The use of Semantic Web technologies towards provision of a Unified Profile that is application- and location-independent is discussed. The utilisation of non-textual data from an Intelligent Environment allows further personalisation to be provided based on a user's activity and behaviour, which then can be presented via any device capable of interfacing with the user.