  One of the distinct features of this century has been the population of older
adults which has been on a constant rise. Elderly people have several needs and
requirements due to physical disabilities, cognitive issues, weakened memory
and disorganized behavior, that they face with increasing age. The extent of
these limitations also differs according to the varying diversities in elderly,
which include age, gender, background, experience, skills, knowledge and so on.
These varying needs and challenges with increasing age, limits abilities of
older adults to perform Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) in an independent
manner. To add to it, the shortage of caregivers creates a looming need for
technology-based services for elderly people, to assist them in performing
their daily routine tasks to sustain their independent living and active aging.
To address these needs, this work consists of making three major contributions
in this field. First, it provides a rather comprehensive review of assisted
living technologies aimed at helping elderly people to perform ADLs. Second,
the work discusses the challenges identified through this review, that
currently exist in the context of implementation of assisted living services
for elderly care in Smart Homes and Smart Cities. Finally, the work also
outlines an approach for implementation, extension and integration of the
existing works in this field for development of a much-needed framework that
can provide personalized assistance and user-centered behavior interventions to
elderly as per their varying and ever-changing needs.
