Karen Robinson (Henricksen)
Researcher
Queensland Research Laboratory, Levels 19 & 20, 300 Adelaide St, Brisbane QLD 4000
NICTA Projects
Dr Karen Robinson (Henricksen) is a researcher in the SAFE Information work package in the Smart Applications For Emergencies Project. Her current work focuses on information modelling for Crisis Information Management Systems (CIMS), as well as related problems including information integration and decision support. Part of her work involves contribution to relevant information standards for the emergency sector, such as the Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) Resource Messaging standard being developed by the OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee.
Previous Positions
Most recently, Karen worked as a research fellow at the University of Queensland, investigating software design and usability issues related to context-aware pervasive computing applications. Prior to that, she was a research scientist in the PACE pervasive computing project at the CRC for Enterprise Distributed Systems Technology (DSTC).
In the PACE project, she developed software engineering methods and tools aimed at simplifying the design, implementation, deployment and testing of context-aware systems. This research built upon a conceptual modelling approach for describing the information required by context-aware systems for self-adaptation – namely the Context Modelling Language (CML) – which Karen developed earlier as part of her doctoral research at the University of Queensland.
CML was one of the first conceptual modelling approaches aimed at supporting software engineering of context-aware applications. The modelling foundations for CML were first described in an paper published in the Pervasive 2002 conference (now one of the most highly cited papers on context modelling, according to Google Scholar); more recent papers appeared in PerCom 2004, the Journal of Pervasive and Mobile Computing, and the International Workshop on Context Modeling and Reasoning (CoMoRea). Details of these papers can be found below.
Qualifications
Karen was awarded a Ph.D. in computer science by the University of Queensland in 2004 for her thesis entitled “A Framework for Context-Aware Pervasive Computing Applications”. She also holds a Bachelor of Information Technology (Hons I) degree from the same institution. In 2000, she was the recipient of the university's prestigious "Graduate of the Year" award.
Research Interests
Karen is interested in a broad set of topics related to the design, implementation and evaluation of pervasive computing applications. She is particularly interested in information modelling and software design techniques for context-aware software. In her current role, her work focuses on applications for disaster prediction, recovery and response, and encompasses information modelling and integration techniques (and supporting software infrastructure and tools) for emergency alerting, resource management, situation awareness and decision support.
Selected publications
(For a full list of publications, please see Karen's personal website).
Selected publications on information modelling for emergency/crisis information management systems:
Renato Iannella, Karen Robinson and Olli-Pekka Rinta-Koski. Towards a Framework for Crisis Information Management Systems (CIMS). Accepted for 14th Annual TIEMS Conference, Trogir, June 2007.
Renato Iannella and Karen Henricksen. Managing Information in the Disaster Coordination Centre: Lessons and Opportunities. Accepted for 4th International ISCRAM Conference, Delft, May 2007.
Karen Henricksen and Renato Iannella. Resource Messaging for Emergencies. In Recent Advances in Security Technology - Proceedings of the 2006 RNSA Security Technology Conference, pages 382-392. September 2006.
Selected publications on context-awareness and pervasive computing:
Karen Henricksen and Jadwiga Indulska. Developing context-aware pervasive computing applications: Models and approach. Journal of Pervasive and Mobile Computing, volume 2(1), pages 37-64. Elsevier, February 2006. [pdf available at http://henricksen.id.au/]
Karen Henricksen, Jadwiga Indulska and Andry Rakotonirainy. Using context and preferences to implement self-adapting pervasive computing applications. Journal of Software Practice and Experience, Special Issue on Experiences with Auto-Adaptive and Reconfigurable Systems, volume 36(11-12), pages 1307-1330. Wiley, 2006.
Karen Henricksen, Jadwiga Indulska, and Andry Rakotonirainy. Modeling context information in pervasive computing systems. In 1st International Conference on Pervasive Computing (Pervasive), volume 2414 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 167-180. Springer, August 2002. [pdf available at http://henricksen.id.au/]
Karen Henricksen and Jadwiga Indulska. A software engineering framework for context-aware pervasive computing. In 2nd IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom), pages 77-86. IEEE Computer Society, March 2004. [pdf available at http://henricksen.id.au/]
Karen Henricksen, Jadwiga Indulska, Ted McFadden, and Sasitharan Balasubramaniam. Middleware for distributed context-aware systems. In International Symposium on Distributed Objects and Applications (DOA), volume 3760 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 846-863. Springer, 2005. [pdf available at http://henricksen.id.au/]
Karen Henricksen and Ricky Robinson. A Survey of Middleware for Sensor Networks: State-of-the-Art and Future Directions. In International Workshop on Middleware for Sensor Networks, ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, pages 60-65. ACM Press, November 2006. [pdf available
at http://henricksen.id.au/]
Karen Henricksen and Jadwiga Indulska. Modelling and using imperfect context information. In 1st Workshop on Context Modeling and Reasoning (CoMoRea), PerCom'04 Workshop Proceedings, pages 33-37. IEEE Computer Society, March 2004. [pdf available
at http://henricksen.id.au/]