Overview of VideoCLEF 2008: Automatic generation of topic-based feeds for dual language audio-visual content

The VideoCLEF track, introduced in 2008, aims to develop and evaluate tasks related to analysis of and access to multilingual multimedia content. In its first year, VideoCLEF piloted the Vid2RSS task, whose main subtask was the classification of dual language video (Dutchlanguage television content featuring English-speaking experts and studio guests). The task offered two additional discretionary subtasks: feed translation and automatic keyframe extraction. Task participants were supplied with Dutch archival metadata, Dutch speech transcripts, English speech transcripts and 10 thematic category labels, which they were required to assign to the test set videos. The videos were grouped by class label into topic-based RSS-feeds, displaying title, description and keyframe for each video. Five groups participated in the 2008 VideoCLEF track. Participants were required to collect their own training data; both Wikipedia and general web content were used. Groups deployed various classifiers (SVM, Naive Bayes and k-NN) or treated the problem as an information retrieval task. Both the Dutch speech transcripts and the archival metadata performed well as sources of indexing features, but no group succeeded in exploiting combinations of feature sources to significantly enhance performance. A small scale fluency/adequacy evaluation of the translation task output revealed the translation to be of sufficient quality to make it valuable to a non-Dutch speaking English speaker. For keyframe extraction, the strategy chosen was to select the keyframe from the shot with the most representative speech transcript content. The automatically selected shots were shown, with a small user study, to be competitive with manually selected shots. Future years of VideoCLEF will aim to expand the corpus and the class label list, as well as to extend the track to additional tasks

TOWARDS DEMAND DRIVEN PUBLISHING: APPROCHES TO THE PRIORITISATION OF DIGITISATION OF NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS DATA

Natural history collections represent a vast repository of biodiversity data of international significance. There is an imperative to capture the data through digitisation projects in order to expose the data to new and established users of biodiversity data. On the basis of review of current state of digitization of natural history collections, a demand driven approach is advocated through the use of metadata to promote and increase access to natural history collection data

Guidance for benthic habitat mapping: an aerial photographic approach

This document, Guidance for Benthic Habitat Mapping: An Aerial Photographic Approach, describes proven technology that can be applied in an operational manner by state-level scientists and resource managers. This information is based on the experience gained by NOAA Coastal Services Center staff and state-level cooperators in the production of a series of benthic habitat data sets in Delaware, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, the Virgin Islands, and Washington, as well as during Center-sponsored workshops on coral remote sensing and seagrass and aquatic habitat assessment. (PDF contains 39 pages) The original benthic habitat document, NOAA Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP): Guidance for Regional Implementation (Dobson et al.), was published by the Department of Commerce in 1995. That document summarized procedures that were to be used by scientists throughout the United States to develop consistent and reliable coastal land cover and benthic habitat information. Advances in technology and new methodologies for generating these data created the need for this updated report, which builds upon the foundation of its predecessor

Design of the shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) and development of a web-based GIS interface

Chapter 5The Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) is a collaborative initiative of the European Commission (EC) and the European Environment Agency (EEA) aimed to establish an integrated and shared EU-wide environmental information system together with the Member States. SEIS presents the European vision on environmental information interoperability. It is a set of high-level principles & workflow-processes that organize the collection, exchange, and use of environmental data & information aimed to: • Modernise the way in which information required by environmental legislation is made available to member states or EC instruments; • Streamline reporting processes and repeal overlaps or obsolete reporting obligations; • Stimulate similar developments at international conventions; • Standardise according to INSPIRE when possible; and • Introduce the SDI (spatial database infrastructure) principle EU-wide. SEIS is a system and workflow of operations that offers technical capabilities geared to meet concept expectations. In that respect, SEIS shows the way and sets up the workflow effectively in a standardise way (e.g, INSPIRE) to: • Collect Data from Spatial Databases, in situ sensors, statistical databases, earth observation readings (e.g., EOS, GMES), marine observation using standard data transfer protocols (ODBC, SOS, ft p, etc). • Harmonise collected data (including data check/data integrity) according to best practices proven to perform well, according to the INSPIRE Directive 2007/2/EC (1) Annexes I: II: III: plus INSPIRE Implementation Rules for data not specified in above mentioned Annexes. • Harmonise collected data according to WISE (Water Information System from Europe) or Ozone-web. • Process, aggregate harmonise data so to extract information in a format understandable by wider audiences (e.g., Eurostat, enviro-indicators). • Document information to fulfi l national reporting obligations towards EU bodies (e.g., the JRC, EEA, DGENV, Eurostat) • Store and publish information for authorised end-users (e.g., citizens, institutions). This paper presents the development and integration of the SEIS-Malta Geoportal. The first section outlines EU Regulations on INSPIRE and Aarhus Directives. The second covers the architecture and the implementation of SEIS-Malta Geoportal. The third discusses the results and successful implementation of the Geoportal.peer-reviewe

Representation and Encoding of Heterogeneous Data in a Web Based Research Environment for Manuscript and Textual Studies

This paper describes the general architecture of a digital research environment for manuscript and textual studies (particularly those pertaining to ancient Greek and Byzantine texts), and it discusses some questions of data representation and encoding in the framework of such an online research platform. The platform is being developed by the project Teuchos. Zentrum für Handschriften- und Textforschung, established in 2007 by the Institut für Griechische und Lateinische Philologie (Universität Hamburg) in cooperation with the Aristoteles-Archiv (Freie Universität Berlin). Teuchos is a long-term infrastructural project of the Universität Hamburg. It is currently in its three-year initial phase which is being co-funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) through the "Thematic Information Networks" scheme within the "Scientific Library Services and Information Systems" programme. We introduce the main object types to be handled by our system and describe the overall functionality of the online platform. The paper focuses on the representations of two main object types: manuscripts as textual witnesses and watermarks, with an emphasis on the former. Since the adequate encoding of different layers of structure of a transmitted text is particularly relevant to optimising users' choices of navigating both digital images of the containing manuscripts and trancriptions of the text contained, this topic is discussed in some detail. We introduce the formal data model and the corresponding encoding for the object types discussed. The project encodes textual data in XML, aiming for TEI conformance where possible. Since no accepted XML model exists for the encoding of metadata within a watermark collection, we briefly explain how we chose to model the objects to accomodate the collections the project is making accessible

MSUO Information Technology and Geographical Information Systems: Common Protocols & Procedures. Report to the Marine Safety Umbrella Operation

The Marine Safety Umbrella Operation (MSUO) facilitates the cooperation between Interreg funded Marine Safety Projects and maritime stakeholders. The main aim of MSUO is to permit efficient operation of new projects through Project Cooperation Initiatives, these include the review of the common protocols and procedures for Information Technology (IT) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). This study carried out by CSA Group and the National Centre for Geocomputation (NCG) reviews current spatial information standards in Europe and the data management methodologies associated with different marine safety projects. International best practice was reviewed based on the combined experience of spatial data research at NCG and initiatives in the US, Canada and the UK relating to marine security service information and acquisition and integration of large marine datasets for ocean management purposes. This report identifies the most appropriate international data management practices that could be adopted for future MSUO projects

DiSCmap : digitisation of special collections mapping, assessment, prioritisation. Final project report

Traditionally, digitisation has been led by supply rather than demand. While end users are seen as a priority they are not directly consulted about which collections they would like to have made available digitally or why. This can be seen in a wide range of policy documents throughout the cultural heritage sector, where users are positioned as central but where their preferences are assumed rather than solicited. Post-digitisation consultation with end users isequally rare. How are we to know that digitisation is serving the needs of the Higher Education community and is sustainable in the long-term? The 'Digitisation in Special Collections: mapping, assessment and prioritisation' (DiSCmap) project, funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Research Information Network (RIN), aimed to:- Identify priority collections for potential digitisation housed within UK Higher Education's libraries, archives and museums as well as faculties and departments.- Assess users' needs and demand for Special Collections to be digitised across all disciplines.- Produce a synthesis of available knowledge about users' needs with regard to usability and format of digitised resources.- Provide recommendations for a strategic approach to digitisation within the wider context and activity of leading players both in the public and commercial sector.The project was carried out jointly by the Centre for Digital Library Research (CDLR) and the Centre for Research in Library and Information Management (CERLIM) and has taken a collaborative approach to the creation of a user-driven digitisation prioritisation framework, encouraging participation and collective engagement between communities.Between September 2008 and March 2009 the DiSCmap project team asked over 1,000 users, including intermediaries (vocational users who take care of collections) and end users (university teachers, researchers and students) a variety of questions about which physical and digital Special Collections they make use of and what criteria they feel must be considered when selecting materials for digitisation. This was achieved through workshops, interviews and two online questionnaires. Although the data gathered from these activities has the limitation of reflecting only a partial view on priorities for digitisation - the view expressed by those institutions who volunteered to take part in the study - DiSCmap was able to develop:- a 'long list' of 945 collections nominated for digitisation both by intermediaries andend-users from 70 HE institutions (see p. 21);- a framework of user-driven prioritisation criteria which could be used to inform current and future digitisation priorities; (see p. 45)- a set of 'short lists' of collections which exemplify the application of user-driven criteria from the prioritisation framework to the long list (see Appendix X):o Collections nominated more than once by various groups of users.o Collections related to a specific policy framework, eg HEFCE's strategically important and vulnerable subjects for Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics.o Collections on specific thematic clusters.o Collections with highest number of reasons for digitisation