The motivation Distributed knowledge sources Distributed experience -------------------------------------------------------------- How to “use” such resources? How to actively involve these people in the society? Ageing population and people with disabilities is a fact We need to find a way to “use” these people actively and efficiently in the society These people can offer: knowledge Experience Time to work and produce more of the above Create virtual communities of such people and provide them with services to communicate and exchange ideas to produce knowledge on specific topics Propose solution in specific social problems Discuss social issues Provide recommendations

The idea A powerful Knowledge Generator Build virtual communities of elderly and functionally impaired people and provide them with services to communicate and exchange ideas to produce knowledge on specific topics Let them propose solutions in specific social problems, discuss social issues, provide recommendations Create a pool of knowledge ready to be processed and practically used Achieve active and useful participation of ageing people in the society

Research interests and advancements Communities (virtual collaboration spaces) building Advertised as semantic services  Semantically enhanced discovery with a reasoning engine  Experts in Semantics and SOA Interaction with the collaboration services Multi-modal access  Experts in ICT accessibility software Several types of sensors to give transparent access for people with disabilities  Experts in sensors and intelligent sensors’ agents technology Mobile access  Experts in Mobile Communication Knowledge Management Semantic processing of the produced knowledge (documents, forums, emails, chats, videos, images) to potentially feed social Decision Support Systems  Experts in DSS and Semantic Knowledge processing Presentation Services to enable the effective presentation of the produced knowledge to people with disabilities  Experts in Knowledge Visualisation Society impact Two main profiles of users Knowledge Generators Knowledge Consumers The Consumers (e.g. Public Administrations, Academic sector, Private companies) will be able to “buy” knowledge generated through the communities of ageing people The revenue may be returned to the ageing people as developments for their welfare