A framework to characterize and provide the context of public spaces

In the development of context-aware applications it is important the existence of applications/platforms that are responsible for the discovery and processing of context information and make it available to be used by these applications. This work presents an autonomous system for characterizing the context of a public place with information about its location, environmental conditions and the nature of the institution that it belongs, and makes this information available to be easily used by other applications. Preliminary evaluations show that the system allows obtaining relevant context information related to the location, characteristics and nature of the institution in which it occurs. This framework can be helpful to facilitate the acquisition of context information in public spaces and in making it available to be used by context-aware applications.