E-village: a virtual solution for real relationships

Demographic change and ageing of the population is one of the socioeconomic challenges European societies have to face in the 21 st century. Loneliness and fear are common among elderly people. Both variables seem to be related to each other and were both found to be "threats" to a good life in old age. The automation of a domotic house shouldn't risk to take away the few social contacts an old user still has with human beings. This paper proposes a network architecture oriented to improve the quality of life of elderly people and their caregivers. The final goal is facilitating an independent and not isolated social life, inside one's home as long as possible . Contextually this architecture tries to facilitate the job of the caregivers allowing the communication with the elders and supplying the attendance with a smaller workload. A Virtual Call Centre (VC2) and a Village Network can give human support helpful for both user and caregiver.