Providing mobile multimodal social services using a grid architecture

In this chapter, we describe a grid approach to providing multimodal context-sensitive social services to mobile users. Interaction design is a major issue for mobile information system not only in terms of input-output channels and information presentation, but also in terms of context-awareness. The proposed platform supports the development of multi-channel, multi-modal, mobile context aware applications, and it is described using an example in an emergency management scenario. The platform allows the deployment of services featuring a multimodal (synergic) UI and backed up on the server side by a distributed architecture based on a GRID approach to better afford the computing load generated by input channels processing. Since a computational GRID provides access to "resources" (typically computing related ones) we began to apply the same paradigm to the modelling and sharing of other resources as well. This concept is described using a scenario about emergencies and crisis management. © 2009, IGI Global.