The scholarly impact of TRECVid (2003-2009)

This paper reports on an investigation into the scholarly impact of the TRECVid (TREC Video Retrieval Evaluation) benchmarking conferences between 2003 and 2009. The contribution of TRECVid to research in video retrieval is assessed by analyzing publication content to show the development of techniques and approaches over time and by analyzing publication impact through publication numbers and citation analysis. Popular conference and journal venues for TRECVid publications are identified in terms of number of citations received. For a selection of participants at different career stages, the relative importance of TRECVid publications in terms of citations vis a vis their other publications is investigated. TRECVid, as an evaluation conference, provides data on which research teams ‘scored’ highly against the evaluation criteria and the relationship between ‘top scoring’ teams at TRECVid and the ‘top scoring’ papers in terms of citations is analysed. A strong relationship was found between ‘success’ at TRECVid and ‘success’ at citations both for high scoring and low scoring teams. The implications of the study in terms of the value of TRECVid as a research activity, and the value of bibliometric analysis as a research evaluation tool, are discussed

On the Benefits of Information Retrieval and Information Extraction Techniques Applied to Digital Forensics

Many jurisdictions suffer from lengthy evidence processing backlogs in digital forensics investigations. This has negative consequences for the timely incorporation of digital evidence into criminal investigations, while also affecting the timelines required to bring a case to court. Modern technological advances, in particular the move towards cloud computing, have great potential in expediting the automated processing of digital evidence, thus reducing the manual workload for investigators. It also promises to provide a platform upon which more sophisticated automated techniques may be employed to improve the process further. This paper identifies some research strains from the areas of Information Retrieval and Information Extraction that have the potential to greatly help with the efficiency and effectiveness of digital forensics investigations

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

Exploring the potential of using mobile applications in diabetes management

Background Diabetes mellitus is a common chronic disease and a leading cause of morbidity, complications and mortality worldwide. The number of people living with diabetes is projected to rise sharply over the forthcoming decades. Diabetes care is complex and can overburden clinicians and nurses. There is a need for innovative, flexible and cost-effective technologies to enable successful diabetes management. This thesis explores the opportunities and challenges of the mobile application (app) technology as a potential tool to support diabetes care and management. Purpose The purpose was to develop and evaluate a mobile app that supports healthcare professionals (HCPs) in clinical decision-making. Methods A mixed-methods approach was used following the user-centred design (UCD) framework for the design and implementation of all studies. Quantitative and qualitative systematic reviews of studies reporting the use of mobile apps to support diabetes management were undertaken to identify, appraise and summarise available research evidence. An interview study was carried out with diabetes specialist nurses (DSNs), to explore their experiences and views, and to identify user requirements for apps. Lastly, a guidelines-based mobile clinical decision-support app was developed and tested with junior doctors and DSNs in a controlled environment to evaluate its usability and impact on adherence to clinical guidelines, and to explore how participants experienced the app and their suggestions for improvements. Results Both reviews found that the existing evidence base for mobile apps is weak and inadequate to draw conclusions about the impact of their use as interventions in diabetes management. The interview study identified that nurses lack experience in using apps in clinical practice, even though they believed it could facilitate and support their work. ‘Diabetes & CKD’, a simple mobile decision-support app, has been designed and built for the study to assist HCPs in management of patients with diabetes and kidney disease and was tested by 39 junior doctors and 3 DSNs. It had no impact on the accuracy of decisions. Feedback from participants after the pilot session and usability testing indicated a wish to integrate such apps into their clinical practice with a strong willingness to use them in the future. Conclusions Application of UCD methods was efficient as the app was well-accepted by both DSNs and junior doctors. Despite the positive views and the strong willingness to use such apps, they are not widely used. There is a need to regulate the use of medical apps in clinical practice. Further research with rigorous methodology is required upon which policymakers and practitioners can base their decision-making

Visual analysis of e-mail communication to support digital forensics & e-discovery investigation in organisations

The main aim of the research is to design and develop interactive visual solutions to explore the information in E-mail communication data to support E-discovery compliance in an organisation. The solutions intent to assist the world of digital forensics and investigations, which will enable users/analysts to explore, identify/find/discover interesting communication behaviour and characterise information of interest. In this research, we designed & developed software prototypes through a structured process of abstraction, design and testing, by using a well-known methodology called Design Study Methodology (DSM). We describe our analysis/approach through examples applied within the context of a real-world application domain. Doing so is intended to explore and answer a series of research questions in ways that will improve the role of visualisation in Digital Forensics and E-discovery investigations. The work identified the knowledge gap, challenges, requirements and tasks in Digital Forensics and E-discovery involving the analysis of E-mail communication data from the unstructured interviews with the organisation domain experts and from the literature. We employed user-centered design (UCD) which involved iterative design process for 3 years and built several visual solutions based on the requirements and tasks. We evaluated the solutions by conducting an empirical study with the experts to understand E-discovery tasks, visual solutions and the interface that can help analyst, to investigate and navigate within communication data, to identify/find/discover various patterns, trends, anomalies and information that might be interesting/relevant to investigation. The solutions were deployed in the collaborator's E-mail platform

Semantic enrichment of knowledge sources supported by domain ontologies

This thesis introduces a novel conceptual framework to support the creation of knowledge representations based on enriched Semantic Vectors, using the classical vector space model approach extended with ontological support. One of the primary research challenges addressed here relates to the process of formalization and representation of document contents, where most existing approaches are limited and only take into account the explicit, word-based information in the document. This research explores how traditional knowledge representations can be enriched through incorporation of implicit information derived from the complex relationships (semantic associations) modelled by domain ontologies with the addition of information presented in documents. The relevant achievements pursued by this thesis are the following: (i) conceptualization of a model that enables the semantic enrichment of knowledge sources supported by domain experts; (ii) development of a method for extending the traditional vector space, using domain ontologies; (iii) development of a method to support ontology learning, based on the discovery of new ontological relations expressed in non-structured information sources; (iv) development of a process to evaluate the semantic enrichment; (v) implementation of a proof-of-concept, named SENSE (Semantic Enrichment kNowledge SourcEs), which enables to validate the ideas established under the scope of this thesis; (vi) publication of several scientific articles and the support to 4 master dissertations carried out by the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from FCT/UNL. It is worth mentioning that the work developed under the semantic referential covered by this thesis has reused relevant achievements within the scope of research European projects, in order to address approaches which are considered scientifically sound and coherent and avoid “reinventing the wheel”.European research projects - CoSpaces (IST-5-034245), CRESCENDO (FP7-234344) and MobiS (FP7-318452