Detecting Changes in Crowdsourced Social Media Images

We propose a novel service framework to detect changes in crowdsourced images. We use a service-oriented approach to model and represent crowdsourced images as image services. Non-functional attributes of an image service are leveraged to detect changes in an image. The changes are reported in form of a version tree. The version tree is constructed in a way that it reflects the extent of changes introduced in different versions. Afterwards, we find semantic differences in between different versions to determine the extent of changes introduced in a specific version. Preliminary experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.Comment: Accepted Paper in ICSO

Strain in historic tapestries: An investigation on mechanical properties and hygroscopic simulation

Historic tapestries are artworks created by weavers, which are modified over time by damage and conservation interventions. Several projects have examined the mechanical and hygroscopic properties of tapestries (e.g. Bilson, Howell and Cooke, 1997, Lennard and Dulieu-Barton, 2014, Duffus et al. 2012 and Alsayednoor et al. 2019). However, these studies either used replica samples made of artificially aged materials or relied on a single technique to analyse the mechanical behaviour of limited set of samples. The two research approaches, produced limited conclusions because of the highly variable mechanical response of historic tapestries. The current research is a collaboration between University College London (UCL), Historic Royal Palaces (HRP), and IBM Research. It adopts a multidisciplinary methodology that incorporates knowledge from engineering, heritage science and conservation. The main body of the thesis is an extensive experimental campaign, whose aim is to characterise the strain response of historic tapestries subjected to environmental changes. A questionnaire complements the research by understanding the influence current conservation techniques have in structural changing tapestries. A comprehensive study of physical and mechanical properties of historic tapestries was carried out. Universal testing machine (UTM) systems and digital image correlation (DIC) have been used extensively for testing historic tapestry fragments. Both methods were used in combination, while quantifying the physical heterogeneity of each fragment tested. In a second stage, the performance of a historic tapestry in open display was studied. A complete historic tapestry was tested inside an environmental chamber under different environmental conditions. Full field strain and local displacements were measured with DIC and newly developed IBM sensors respectively. With the study of weaved features in the tested tapestries, DIC showed that mechanics and dispersion in tensile results can be explained. Results from hygroscopic experiments inside the chamber quantified strain variation when tapestries are exposed to indoor uncontrolled environments

Fusion of Information and Analytics: A Discussion on Potential Methods to Cope with Uncertainty in Complex Environments (Big Data and IoT)

International audienceInformation overload and complexity are core problems to most organizations of today. The advances in networking capabilities have created the conditions of complexity by enabling richer, real-time interactions between and among individuals, objects, systems and organizations. Fusion of Information and Analytics Technologies (FIAT) are key enablers for the design of current and future decision support systems to support prognosis, diagnosis, and prescriptive tasks in such complex environments. Hundreds of methods and technologies exist, and several books have been dedicated to either analytics or information fusion so far. However, very few have discussed the methodological aspects and the need of integrating frameworks for these techniques coming from multiple disciplines. This paper presents a discussion of potential integrating frameworks as well as the development of a computational model to evolve FIAT-based systems capable of meeting the challenges of complex environments such as in Big Data and Internet of Things (IoT)

Towards next generation coordination infrastructures

Coordination infrastructures play a central role in the engineering of multiagent systems. Since the advent of agent technology, research on coordination infrastructures has produced a significant number of infrastructures with varying features. In this paper, we review the the state-of-the-art coordination infrastructures with the purpose of identifying open research challenges that next generation coordination infrastructures should address. Our analysis concludes that next generation coordination infrastructures must address a number of challenges: (i) to become socially aware, by facilitating human interaction within a MAS; (ii) to assist agents in their decision making by providing decision support that helps them reduce the scope of reasoning and facilitates the achievement of their goals; and (iii) to increase openness to support on-line, fully decentralised design and execution. Furthermore, we identify some promising approaches in the literature, together with the research issues worth investigating, to cope with such challenges. © Cambridge University Press, 2015.The work presented in this paper has been partially funded by projects EVE (TIN2009-14702-C02-01), AT (CSD2007-0022), and the Generalitat of Catalunya grant 2009-SGR-1434Peer Reviewe

Towards next generation coordination infrastructures

Coordination infrastructures play a central role in the engineering of multiagent systems. Since the advent of agent technology, research on coordination infrastructures has produced a significant number of infrastructures with varying features. In this paper, we review the the state-of-the-art coordination infrastructures with the purpose of identifying open research challenges that next generation coordination infrastructures should address. Our analysis concludes that next generation coordination infrastructures must address a number of challenges: (i) to become socially aware, by facilitating human interaction within a MAS; (ii) to assist agents in their decision making by providing decision support that helps them reduce the scope of reasoning and facilitates the achievement of their goals; and (iii) to increase openness to support on-line, fully decentralised design and execution. Furthermore, we identify some promising approaches in the literature, together with the research issues worth investigating, to cope with such challenges