Monitoring distributed fragmented skylines

Distributed skyline computation is important for a wide range of domains, from distributed and web-based systems to ISP-network monitoring and distributed databases. The problem is particularly challenging in dynamic distributed settings, where the goal is to efficiently monitor a continuous skyline query over a collection of distributed streams. All existing work relies on the assumption of a single point of reference for object attributes/dimensions: objects may be vertically or horizontally partitioned, but the accurate value of each dimension for each object is always maintained by a single site. This assumption is unrealistic for several distributed applications, where object information is fragmented over a set of distributed streams (each monitored by a different site) and needs to be aggregated (e.g., averaged) across several sites. Furthermore, it is frequently useful to define skyline dimensions through complex functions over the aggregated objects, which raises further challenges for dealing with distribution and object fragmentation. We present the first known distributed algorithms for continuous monitoring of skylines over complex functions of fragmented multi-dimensional objects. Our algorithms rely on decomposition of the skyline monitoring problem to a select set of distributed threshold-crossing queries, which can be monitored locally at each site. We propose several optimizations, including: (a) a technique for adaptively determining the most efficient monitoring strategy for each object, (b) an approximate monitoring technique, and (c) a strategy that reduces communication overhead by grouping together threshold-crossing queries. Furthermore, we discuss how our proposed algorithms can be used to address other continuous query types. A thorough experimental study with synthetic and real-life data sets verifies the effectiveness of our schemes and demonstrates order-of-magnitude improvements in communication costs compared to the only alternative centralized solution

Probabilistic threshold range aggregate query processing over uncertain data

Uncertainty is inherent in many novel and important applications such as market surveillance, information extraction sensor data analysis, etc. In the recent a few decades, uncertain data has attracted considerable research attention. There are various factors that cause the uncertainty, for instance randomness or incompleteness of data, limitations of equipment and delay or loss in data transfer. A probabilistic threshold range aggregate (PRTA) query retrieves summarized information about the uncertain objects in the database satisfying a range query, with respect to a given probability threshold. This thesis is trying to address and handle this important type of query which there is no previous work studying on. We formulate the problem in both discrete and continuous uncertain data model and develop a novel index structure, asU-tree (aggregate-based sampling-auxiliary U-tree) which not only supports exact query answering but also provides approximate results with accuracy guarantee if efficiency is more concerned. The new asU-tree structure is totally dynamic. Query processing algorithms for both exact answer and approximate answer based on this new index structure are also proposed. An extensive experimental study shows that asU-tree is very efficient and effective over real and synthetic datasets

Multimedia

The nowadays ubiquitous and effortless digital data capture and processing capabilities offered by the majority of devices, lead to an unprecedented penetration of multimedia content in our everyday life. To make the most of this phenomenon, the rapidly increasing volume and usage of digitised content requires constant re-evaluation and adaptation of multimedia methodologies, in order to meet the relentless change of requirements from both the user and system perspectives. Advances in Multimedia provides readers with an overview of the ever-growing field of multimedia by bringing together various research studies and surveys from different subfields that point out such important aspects. Some of the main topics that this book deals with include: multimedia management in peer-to-peer structures & wireless networks, security characteristics in multimedia, semantic gap bridging for multimedia content and novel multimedia applications

Design, Design Thinking and Innovation: The Electrolux Professional Practices Assessment

The design thinking label assumed a plurality of minings since its first adoption in the design discipline and its subsequent developments in the management realm. Over its long journey, its different interpretations polarised the academic and practitioner audience eliciting appreciation and critiques. Today, the term coexists in different meanings. Still, both parties seem to agree on the positive impact of design thinking practices on organisations. Electrolux Professional is not an exception. Since the first adoption of the concept, the design department started to expand its influence, arriving to play a strategic role in the organisation’s innovation dynamics. The literature suggests a correlation between design thinking practices and innovation, but what are their real implications and impacts on the company’s innovation infrastructure? This research exploited the Electrolux Professional collaboration to investigate the design thinking practices in context. Firstly, it proposes a historical transdisciplinary interpretation of design thinking. Secondly, it focuses on the Electrolux Professional case, inquiring about its innovation ecosystem, the design department and the implication design thinking had. Thirdly, it describes the development of a multi-level framework and a correlated tool to explore the practices and perceived impacts. Finally, the framework was used to assess the design thinking practices in Electrolux Professional and develop three models summarising the primary characteristic of the design thinking practices. The last part aims to evaluate the design thinking impact on Electrolux Professional’s innovation system. Still, it is not concluded yet. The strategy is defined, and the monitoring system is being implemented, but data have not been collected yet. On the academic side, this study strived to reconnect design thinking with the design discipline, giving the designers and managers new evidence of its impact on innovation. On the practice side, the framework and the evaluation strategy aim to offer practitioners valuable tools to manage and leverage design and design thinking in the organisational innovation discussion.The design thinking label assumed a plurality of minings since its first adoption in the design discipline and its subsequent developments in the management realm. Over its long journey, its different interpretations polarised the academic and practitioner audience eliciting appreciation and critiques. Today, the term coexists in different meanings. Still, both parties seem to agree on the positive impact of design thinking practices on organisations. Electrolux Professional is not an exception. Since the first adoption of the concept, the design department started to expand its influence, arriving to play a strategic role in the organisation’s innovation dynamics. The literature suggests a correlation between design thinking practices and innovation, but what are their real implications and impacts on the company’s innovation infrastructure? This research exploited the Electrolux Professional collaboration to investigate the design thinking practices in context. Firstly, it proposes a historical transdisciplinary interpretation of design thinking. Secondly, it focuses on the Electrolux Professional case, inquiring about its innovation ecosystem, the design department and the implication design thinking had. Thirdly, it describes the development of a multi-level framework and a correlated tool to explore the practices and perceived impacts. Finally, the framework was used to assess the design thinking practices in Electrolux Professional and develop three models summarising the primary characteristic of the design thinking practices. The last part aims to evaluate the design thinking impact on Electrolux Professional’s innovation system. Still, it is not concluded yet. The strategy is defined, and the monitoring system is being implemented, but data have not been collected yet. On the academic side, this study strived to reconnect design thinking with the design discipline, giving the designers and managers new evidence of its impact on innovation. On the practice side, the framework and the evaluation strategy aim to offer practitioners valuable tools to manage and leverage design and design thinking in the organisational innovation discussion

Methods, Models, and Datasets for Visual Servoing and Vehicle Localisation

Machine autonomy has become a vibrant part of industrial and commercial aspirations. A growing demand exists for dexterous and intelligent machines that can work in unstructured environments without any human assistance. An autonomously operating machine should sense its surroundings, classify different kinds of observed objects, and interpret sensory information to perform necessary operations. This thesis summarizes original methods aimed at enhancing machine’s autonomous operation capability. These methods and the corresponding results are grouped into two main categories. The first category consists of research works that focus on improving visual servoing systems for robotic manipulators to accurately position workpieces. We start our investigation with the hand-eye calibration problem that focuses on calibrating visual sensors with a robotic manipulator. We thoroughly investigate the problem from various perspectives and provide alternative formulations of the problem and error objectives. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed methods are robust and yield accurate solutions when tested on real and simulated data. The work package is bundled as a toolkit and available online for public use. In an extension, we proposed a constrained multiview pose estimation approach for robotic manipulators. The approach exploits the available geometric constraints on the robotic system and infuses them directly into the pose estimation method. The empirical results demonstrate higher accuracy and significantly higher precision compared to other studies. In the second part of this research, we tackle problems pertaining to the field of autonomous vehicles and its related applications. First, we introduce a pose estimation and mapping scheme to extend the application of visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping to unstructured dynamic environments. We identify, extract, and discard dynamic entities from the pose estimation step. Moreover, we track the dynamic entities and actively update the map based on changes in the environment. Upon observing the limitations of the existing datasets during our earlier work, we introduce FinnForest, a novel dataset for testing and validating the performance of visual odometry and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping methods in an un-structured environment. We explored an environment with a forest landscape and recorded data with multiple stereo cameras, an IMU, and a GNSS receiver. The dataset offers unique challenges owing to the nature of the environment, variety of trajectories, and changes in season, weather, and daylight conditions. Building upon the future works proposed in FinnForest Dataset, we introduce a novel scheme that can localize an observer with extreme perspective changes. More specifically, we tailor the problem for autonomous vehicles such that they can recognize a previously visited place irrespective of the direction it previously traveled the route. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that accomplishes bi-directional loop closure on monocular images with a nominal field of view. To solve the localisation problem, we segregate the place identification from the pose regression by using deep learning in two steps. We demonstrate that bi-directional loop closure on monocular images is indeed possible when the problem is posed correctly, and the training data is adequately leveraged. All methodological contributions of this thesis are accompanied by extensive empirical analysis and discussions demonstrating the need, novelty, and improvement in performance over existing methods for pose estimation, odometry, mapping, and place recognition

Analysis of Chinese travel blogs of New Zealand

The Chinese outbound tourism market is a fast growing source market for many destinations. However, more research is needed to better understand the Chinese outbound tourism market and its diversity and complexity. Again, it can be argued that consistent monitoring of what is a fast evolving market is required, even where prior research has been undertaken. The aim of this research is to provide the tourism industry with a better understanding of the Chinese tourist market and the attitudes of Chinese visitors with specific reference to New Zealand. Consequently perceived destination image, travel motivations, and patterns of online communications of and about New Zealand were identified by analysing travel blogs written by Chinese tourists. Given that there were 181 million bloggers existing in China by the end of 2009 (CNNIC, 2009), blogs written by Chinese visitors have a significant market value for tourism organisations and marketers. This study used content analysis to identify the perceived destination image held by Chinese tourists to New Zealand. In this study, the analytical process was divided into two parts, namely photographic and textual analysis. In each of the two parts, qualitative content analysis was first undertaken, and then followed by secondary quantitative analysis to support the findings discerned through the qualitative process. By analysing 6968 photographs and 408 blog entries posted by Chinese visitors, an image of New Zealand as a tourism destination was identified. The findings revealed that the main components of New Zealand, as perceived by Chinese visitors, were that it possessed a protected ecological environment, offered a variety of activities, and had a highly developed society with a “Pakeha” culture. The research also indicated that Chinese cultural norms played an important role in the process of decision making, perception formation and interpretation. These norms included the desire of harmony, Li, Junzi Aspiration, and a respect of authorities. The results of the study also included details about travel patterns in dining, accommodation, and tourism activities. These results indicated that content analysis of visual and textual materials provides rich information about perceived destination image, travel preference, and online information search behaviours. Online photographs and narratives posted by visitors are not only valuable information source for potential visitors who read the blogs, but can also be an effective way to understand the Chinese market. Based on the results, it can be concluded that blogs are important, and point a way by which destination marketing organisations can seek to influence potential visitors. For example, blog celebrities are an effective way by which to attract thousands of readers to know more about the country. The use of the Chinese language and creating special arrangements for Chinese festivals are shown to be effective means by which hosts can display a friendly attitude to their Chinese guests. With more and more countries being granted Approved Destination Status (ADS) by the Chinese government, Chinese citizens have more choices as to where to travel overseas, thereby intensifying competition for their custom. It is vital for tourism destinations to promote their unique features through all possible channels according to different target markets. Additionally, because service quality is a crucial issue for group tourists, consistent monitoring the travel blogs is an effective way of facilitating the improvement of the service quality of tourism product suppliers

Effective Instance Matching for Heterogeneous Structured Data

One main problem towards the effective usage of structured data is instance matching, where the goal is to find instance representations referring to the same real-world thing. In this book we investigate how to effectively match Heterogeneous structured data. We evaluate our approaches against the latest baselines. The results show advances beyond the state-of-the-art

Advanced Location-Based Technologies and Services

Since the publication of the first edition in 2004, advances in mobile devices, positioning sensors, WiFi fingerprinting, and wireless communications, among others, have paved the way for developing new and advanced location-based services (LBSs). This second edition provides up-to-date information on LBSs, including WiFi fingerprinting, mobile computing, geospatial clouds, geospatial data mining, location privacy, and location-based social networking. It also includes new chapters on application areas such as LBSs for public health, indoor navigation, and advertising. In addition, the chapter on remote sensing has been revised to address advancements