Preface

Humans have been embedding information into their environments or onto the objects that these environments consist of since the ancient years of mankind. Epigraphs and wall paintings are examples of such communication acts.

Information may be communicated to us within an environmental context through a variety of media and accordingly these may support human activities in different ways. For example, signs [1] may communicate secondary environmental information needed to make wayfinding decisions; they tell the user what is where and they also specify when and how an event is likely to occur. Signs, symbols, graphic representations or linguistic communication – spoken or written – are different forms of secondary spatial information sources which may be communicated through a medium to a user in an environment and thus enrich this environment with meaning, ultimately augmenting the experience afforded by this environment. Of course, this information enhances the overall information referring to this environment that the user has already acquired from sensory input, as a result of navigating and interacting, amongst the physical objects that the environments consists of.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and the new media they support have introduced many new ways of augmenting the experience of physical environments in order to communicate meaning and support several computer-mediated activities or interpersonal mediated communication, amongst individuals who occupy these spaces. Our contemporary urban environment is already filled with various media and appropriate display systems and artifacts

Most of these representations are visual, i.e. large size prints, video projections, wall paintings, TV closed circuits, touch screens etc.

which communicate visual and/or auditory content to citizens. These environments may also incorporate systems which capture visual, auditory or other types of data regarding human activity or environmental phenomena, via appropriate sensing devices. Consequently, this input may be utilized for generating relevant actions by several types of effectors or for generating related sequences of multisensory digital representations. It can therefore be suggested [2] that the incorporation of ICT systems results in an electronic enhancement of our everyday urban environment and that our computer supported activities and communication with these environments, at a personal level, or with other citizens who exist and act within them, at a social level, is mediated by these systems. One of the most advanced forms of such systems is Intelligent Environments.

ICTs, whether mobile, wireless or embedded in persistent architectural forms, facilitate the collection and dissemination of data, infusing the physical expression of the environment with digital layers of content, thus contributing to the emergence of new hybridized spatial experiences as well as novel forms of interacting with computers and with other participating humans. These systems and the hybrid spatial experiences they afford, encourage encounters among users; both embodied and mediated, and influence community dynamics, giving rise to networks around common interests and collectives of affect. Sometimes, such groups, irrespective of how ephemeral, unstable and dispersed they may be, negotiate a new kind of engagement with the urban environment and civic life, suggesting thus an organizational paradigm that manages to surpass traditional vertical hierarchies of space and consequently of power and control [3].

It is therefore evident that the deployment of intelligent environment systems and applications has very significant consequences at a psychological, social, political and cultural level for all participants of these experiences as well as for the stake holders involved. Therefore, it is suggested that the processes of designing, developing and evaluating intelligent environments should also be seen from a multidisciplinary perspective in order to assure that these systems will be embedded in our everyday lives and environments in the best possible manner, by taking into account the needs, potential and expected impact that their use may have onto individuals, groups or communities of people. Such an interdisciplinary approach may lead to the creation of ergonomically efficient, aesthetically pleasing and functional Intelligent Environment systems. Accordingly, there is a need for new design practices and methodologies that may take into account the hybrid nature of the spatial experience afforded by these media, as well as the opportunities for socialisation and communication that they may offer. Examples of the disciplines that the production of Intelligent Environments may relate to are: cognitive psychology, environmental psychology, architectural and visual design, urban studies, design studies, social and cultural studies, museum studies, political communication, etc.

The need for a multidisciplinary approach is indeed one of the implicit aims for organizing a series of international workshops for the fifth time in the context of the Intelligent Environments Conference in 2013 which is held in Athens, Greece. This need was adequately accomplished as is evident in the very interesting and challenging international workshops which are included in the program and documented in these proceedings.

This is actually the 9th Intelligent Environments (IE) conference and it is organized by the School of Architecture – National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and the Hellenic Open University (HOU). The workshops part of the 9th IE conference is organized by the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the Hellenic Open University. Previously, the Intelligent Environments Conference has been successfully organized in Colchester, UK (2005), Athens, Greece (2006), Ulm, Germany (2007), Seattle, USA (2008), Barcelona, Spain (2009), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2010), and Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom (2011).

The workshops part of the conference is organized with the aim of providing a forum for scientists, researchers and engineers from both industry and academia to discuss about topics related to intelligent environments, ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence. This year we are pleased to include the following workshops:

• AITAmI: The 8th workshop on Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Ambient Intelligence aims at gathering researchers in a variety of AI subfields together with representatives of commercial interests to explore the technology and applications for ambient intelligence. The workshop is organized, once again, by Asier Aztiria (University of Mondragon, Spain), Juan Carlos Augusto (University of Middlesex, United Kingdom), and Diane Cook (Washington State University, USA).

• ACIE: The 1st International Workshop on Applications of Affective Computing in Intelligent Environments is organized by Faiyaz Doctor (Coventry University, United Kingdom) and Victor Zamudio (Instituto Tecnolgico de Len, Mexico). This workshop provides a forum to promote and demonstrate how recent development of unobtrusive physiological sensing can be used to capture emotive or physiological information to enhance IE based applications.

• SOOW: The Smart Offices and Other Workplaces Workshop is organized by Peter Mikulecky (University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic), Pavel Cech from the same university and Carlos Ramos (Polytechnic of Porto's Insitute of Engineering, Portugal). This workshop fosters discussion on how ambient intelligence is useful for the development of intelligent workplaces devoted to support working activities.

• CoT: The 1st Cloud of Things Workshop is organized by Jeannette Chin (Anglia Ruskin University) and Victor Callaghan (University of Essex). The workshop will discuss on the synergy offered by the combination of the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, Intelligent Environments and embedded computing.

• MASIE: The 1st Workshop on Museums As Intelligent Environments is organized by Nikolaos Avouris (University of Patras, Greece), Alexandra Bounia, Niloketa Yiannoutsou and Maria Roussou. The workshop invites researchers and practitioners of intelligent environments technologies with interest in applying them in museums and sites of culture as well as museologists, curators and museum educators who are interested in investigating and discussing the potential of such technologies for modern museums. The workshop is thus intended to act as a forum for cross-fertilization of ideas between museum experts and researchers of intelligent environments.

• WOFIEE: The 2nd Workshop on Future Intelligent Educational Environments is organized By Victor Callaghan (Essex University), Minjuan Wang (San Diego State University), and Juan Carlos Augusto (University of Middlesex, United Kingdom). The focus of the workshop is placed on how intelligent technologies can support the development of new educational technologies and environments around the world.

• IECL: The Workshop on Intelligent Environments for Creative Learning is organized by Elena Antonopoulou, Athina Papadopoulou, Theodora Vardouli and Eirini Vouliouri. It aims to bring together theoretical and technical work that explores ways in which intelligent environments can foster learning, enable user creativity, and develop individual and collective design intelligence.

• SSC: The 1st Sociable Smart City Workshop is organized by Eleni Christopoulou, Dimitrios Ringas and John Garofalakis. The focus of this workshop is on the social and cultural aspects of the smart city. In particular, the organisers seek to study how urban computing alters the city, the perception of people about the city, the communication among people and the social and cultural impact on the city and on city life. The goal of this workshop is to define what is a “sociable smart city” and how this vision can be realized.

• IUIC: The Workshop on Intelligent Users and Intelligent Cities is organized by Dimitris Hatzopoulos, Eleni Mitakou, Paraskevi Fanou and Efpraxia Zamani. The main goal of the workshop is to firstly identify users of intelligent environments by giving them characteristics, and then recognize the parameters that establish the city as an intelligent environment, using among our main research instruments the representational arts.

• CUI: The 1st Workshop on Constructing Urban Intelligence is organized by Dimitris Papanikolaou (DDes candidate, Harrvard GSD). This workshop explores models, methods, and problems of constructing ambient intelligence through human interaction and for this purpose it has invited designers, researchers, and practitioners across multiple disciplinary domains to submit papers with positions on this subject:

We would like to thank everybody who made these proceedings possible, once again for the IE'13. Firstly, we would like to thank each and every workshop's organizing committees. They are the main contributors of this event and without them these workshops would not have been possible. We would also like to thank the local staff who worked really hard to make this series of events a success and the Faculty of Law of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens who provided significant support for accommodating the workshop activities. Of course we would like to give special thanks to the researchers, who do the hard work, achieve the advances, set the research agenda and then come to Intelligent Environments workshops to present and discuss their insights. We sincerely hope that the audience will find this set of scientific papers interesting and inspiring for their own work. This contribution is our main goal and we believe that succeeding in this effort will ultimately make Intelligent Environments occupy the place they deserve in academia, the industry and the society. Juan A. Botía and Dimitris Charitos

General chairs of the IE'13 Workshops and Editors of the Book