Transfer Learning in Smart Environments

The knowledge embodied in cognitive models of smart environments, such as machine learning models, is commonly associated with time-consuming and costly processes such as large-scale data collection, data labeling, network training, and fine-tuning of models. Sharing and reuse of these elaborated resources between intelligent systems of different environments, which is known as transfer learning, would facilitate the adoption of cognitive services for the users and accelerate the uptake of intelligent systems in smart building and smart city applications. Currently, machine learning processes are commonly built for intra-organization purposes and tailored towards specific use cases with the assumption of integrated model repositories and feature pools. Transferring such services and models beyond organization boundaries is a challenging task that requires human intervention to find the matching models and evaluate them. This paper investigates the potential of communication and transfer learning between smart environments in order to empower a decentralized and peer-to-peer ecosystem for seamless and automatic transfer of services and machine learning models. To this end, we explore different knowledge types in the context of smart built environments and propose a collaboration framework based on knowledge graph principles for describing the machine learning models and their corresponding dependencies.