Reconfiguring and Customizing Living Environments with Knowledge: The Age-It Decision Support System

The aging population presents growing challenges in ensuring independent and autonomous living for older adults, particularly those with chronic conditions and disabilities. Smart environments and Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies offer promising solutions by integrating intelligent systems that adapt to users’ needs. However, personalizing or reconfiguring living spaces to accommodate AAL technologies requires a multidisciplinary approach that considers health conditions, assistive devices, and spatial constraints. This study presents the Age-It Decision Support System (DSS), a tool designed to assist architects and designers in selecting and integrating AAL solutions into domestic environments. The DSS leverages an ontological framework to model individual health conditions, environmental constraints, and assistive technologies, enabling a structured decision-making process. By incorporating a knowledge-based reasoning system, the DSS suggests user-centered and suitable modifications and device placements while ensuring compatibility with the physical space. The system communicates with Autodesk Revit, allowing seamless data exchange through XML-based file processing. This enables early-stage simulations of AAL device integration, facilitating collaborative decision-making among designers, healthcare professionals, and end users. A case study demonstrates the DSS’s effectiveness in recommending assistive solutions for a user with reduced mobility, considering spatial constraints and usability factors. Future developments aim to enhance the ontology with a broader range of health conditions and assistive devices, improving its robustness and usability in real-world applications. The proposed DSS represents a significant step toward personalized and adaptive home environments, fostering independent living and improving the quality of life for older adults.