Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions have been conquering an important place among strategies to promote ageing in place and address the societal challenges of population ageing. Related available smart solutions and their pervasiveness raise security challenges requiring more flexible and bette r adapted characteristics. However, such solutions are frequently described in the literature without any reference to access control and the few existing works in the AAL field focus mostly on authentication or physical access control. This paper describes the SoTRAACE (Socio-Technical Risk-Adaptable Access Control) model, designed to better adapt users’ access control needs to each AAL security context. SoTRAACE takes into account contextual, technological and user’s interaction profiling functionalities and performs a quantitative and qualitative risk assessment analysis to support a smart decision-making on the most secure, private and usable way to access and display information. SoTRAACE’s unique advantages for improved availability and privacy are discussed in contrast with existing access control models and within two AAL for mental health use case scenarios. SoTRAACE’s versatility adapts to different situations and user’s goals, whether these are patient or caregiver oriented, constituting an innovative and complete proposal for enhanced trust and security in AAL or similar smart environments.

SoTRAACE for smart security in ambient assisted living