Page - 17 - in Intelligent Environments 2019 - Workshop Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Intelligent Environments

Towards a General Framework for Aditya Santokheea,1, Juan Carlos Augusto b and Lindsey Brodie b a R.G. on Development of Intelligent Environments, Department of Computer Science, Middlesex University, Mauritius b R.G. on Development of Intelligent Environments, Department of Computer Science, Middlesex University, London, UK Abstract. Recent studies reveal that there are different methodologies for developing Intelligent Environments. Thus, it has become essential to scrutinize and evaluate the methodologies to increase our understanding of their strengths, weaknesses and features. However, these concerns have not been the target of recent research efforts. This paper presents an evaluation framework for qualitative evaluation of Intelligent Environment methodologies. It is a step towards standardization of current Intelligent Environments methodologies. The framework has been defined through studying, abstracting and unifying best practices from systems engineering. It is based on a generic life cycle model. As an initial validation, we evaluated the User Centred Intelligent Environment Development Process against the proposed framework. We note that this methodology at its current state presents some limitations which will be addressed in future works. Keywords. Intelligent Environments methods, systems engineering, evaluation framework, smart irrigation system 1. Introduction Engineering Intelligent Environments (IEs) is a challenging endeavour due to the dynamic nature of the operational conditions in which these systems have to function. Such conditions include diverse set of hardware devices, complex human computer interactions, unstable resource availability, utilisation of the system in situations that were not originally anticipated and the occurrence of errors that are hard to predict [2]. According to recent studies, IEs are being developed using different methodologies due to lack of any recognised standard one [3, 15, 26]. It is also reported that the methodologies are disconnected from each other and each one of them is focused on solving certain development issues [1]. It would therefore be useful to scrutinize and evaluate IE methodologies to increase our understanding of their strengths, weaknesses and features especially as this has not been a focus within recent research. However, few attempts have been made to develop evaluation frameworks for IE methodologies. Studies have investigated evaluation frameworks for related IE systems such as Pervasive Computing [4, 24], Ambient Assisted Living [23] and Multi-Agent [29]. However, the focus has been mostly on evaluation of the systems rather than on methodologies used to develop them. 1 Corresponding Author, E-mail: a.santokhee@mdx.ac.mu Evaluating Intelligent Environments’ Methodologies Intelligent Environments 2019 A. Muñoz et al. (Eds.) © 2019 The authors and IOS Press. This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0). doi:10.3233/AISE190018 17