· · · Repository hosted by TU Delft Library

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) systems and services aim to provide a solution for growing healthcare expenses and degradation of life quality of elderly using information and communication technology. Inparticular AAL solutions are being created that are heavily based on web services an sensor technologies. AAL solutions have to deal witha large amount of privacy sensitive information and consequently AAL systems must be designed with strong attention to security in order to properly manage user consent and protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of its resources. Analysis shows thatexisting AAL frameworks have serious shortcomings with respect to the security controls they offer, typically basic authentication, encryp-tion and access control. An important challenge is to enable users tostay in control of their data in a setting where that data is exchanged between several different service providers and where users want to share data with their friends and relatives. This report presents a high level security architecture that describes a set of security controls that must be offered by AAL frameworks and proposes an ad-vanced authorization architecture for AAL. In particular it incorporates the eXtensible Access Control Language (XACM L) and a protocol for transferring policies in order to support end to end access and usage control in AAL systems.

An awareness system was designed to provide peace of mind and a sense of connectedness to adults who care for an elderly parent living alone. The iterative design of the Aurama awareness system showed andour empirical research, including field trials ranging from four tosix months, confirm the potential of awareness systems to support both generations suggesting that future research should examine, firstly, how to convey long-term trends regarding the wellbeing of the elderly and, secondly, how to intertwine the communication of awareness information with expressive forms of communication. We further explore the role that formal care providers can play when caring for the elderly using the awareness system. We discuss implications of our studies for the design of ambient intelligent systems supporting awareness between elderly, their adult children and care providers, and derive several lessons learned in conducting long-term field trials.