Real-time event classification in field sport videos

The paper presents a novel approach to real-time event detection in sports broadcasts. We present how the same underlying audio-visual feature extraction algorithm based on new global image descriptors is robust across a range of different sports alleviating the need to tailor it to a particular sport. In addition, we propose and evaluate three different classifiers in order to detect events using these features: a feed-forward neural network, an Elman neural network and a decision tree. Each are investigated and evaluated in terms of their usefulness for real-time event classification. We also propose a ground truth dataset together with an annotation technique for performance evaluation of each classifier useful to others interested in this problem

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

Self-organizing distributed digital library supporting audio-video

The StreamOnTheFly network combines peer-to-peer networking and open-archive principles for community radio channels and TV stations in Europe. StreamOnTheFly demonstrates new methods of archive management and personalization technologies for both audio and video. It also provides a collaboration platform for community purposes that suits the flexible activity patterns of these kinds of broadcaster communities

Towards a machine enabled semantic framework for the distributed engineering design

The overall aim of this thesis is to identify and propose a suitable architectural framework for supporting cooperation processes and therefore enabling semantics within the distributed engineering design environment. The proposed architecture is intended to\ud characterize a software-based management of design related data, information and knowledge flows in the distributed engineering design organization. The aim is to provide a computational context for implementing ICT tools that would: (i) Minimise the effect of user and resource dispersion (particularly temporal and geographical dispersion), the misunderstandings that might be generated by the\ud (otherwise beneficial) functional and semantic distribution, the time spent for searching and retrieval of information, the effort of information translation between different tools and the administrational and organisational efforts not directly related to the design process (e.g. revision control) (ii) Maximise the quality of information (i.e. relevant information at relevant and appropriate times), knowledge sharing and reuse among distributed design\ud actors, the flexibility of the user interfaces and the designer’s time spent in the actual designing process.\ud In order to achieve the overall aim, the research work supporting this thesis was carried out along the following objectives:\ud 1. To investigate and characterize the engineering design process performed in a distributed environment and its problematic aspects;\ud 2. To research and study alternative theories for thinking and modelling the distributed engineering design process;\ud 3. To investigate current research in information and knowledge management for identifying supporting technologies for a possible solution to the identified\ud problematic aspects (from point 1);\ud 4. To analyze the requirement needs for a solution according to the findings from previous objectives, i.e. the driving problems (from point 1), the research and\ud therefore the thinking approach (from point 2), and available supporting technologies (from point 3);\ud 5. To synthesize the architectural framework along the identified supporting technologies (from point 3);\ud 6. To instantiate a software system along the underlying computational context as described by the architectural framework (from point 5)

A novel service discovery model for decentralised online social networks.

Online social networks (OSNs) have become the most popular Internet application that attracts billions of users to share information, disseminate opinions and interact with others in the online society. The unprecedented growing popularity of OSNs naturally makes using social network services as a pervasive phenomenon in our daily life. The majority of OSNs service providers adopts a centralised architecture because of its management simplicity and content controllability. However, the centralised architecture for large-scale OSNs applications incurs costly deployment of computing infrastructures and suffers performance bottleneck. Moreover, the centralised architecture has two major shortcomings: the single point failure problem and the lack of privacy, which challenges the uninterrupted service provision and raises serious privacy concerns. This thesis proposes a decentralised approach based on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks as an alternative to the traditional centralised architecture. Firstly, a self-organised architecture with self-sustaining social network adaptation has been designed to support decentralised topology maintenance. This self-organised architecture exhibits small-world characteristics with short average path length and large average clustering coefficient to support efficient information exchange. Based on this self-organised architecture, a novel decentralised service discovery model has been developed to achieve a semantic-aware and interest-aware query routing in the P2P social network. The proposed model encompasses a service matchmaking module to capture the hidden semantic information for query-service matching and a homophily-based query processing module to characterise user’s common social status and interests for personalised query routing. Furthermore, in order to optimise the efficiency of service discovery, a swarm intelligence inspired algorithm has been designed to reduce the query routing overhead. This algorithm employs an adaptive forwarding strategy that can adapt to various social network structures and achieves promising search performance with low redundant query overhead in dynamic environments. Finally, a configurable software simulator is implemented to simulate complex networks and to evaluate the proposed service discovery model. Extensive experiments have been conducted through simulations, and the obtained results have demonstrated the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed model.University of Derb