This project seeks to apply novel artificial intelligence approaches to develop intelligent agents that will enable domestic consumers to visualise, understand and manage their energy use. It is a three year EPSRC project (EP/I000143/1), starting October 2010, within the 'Transforming Energy Demand through Digital Innovation' call. The project brings together expertise in artificial intelligence and software agents, renewable energy and energy efficiency in the built environment, and human factors in the design of automated control and feedback systems at the University of Southampton to address the challenges presented in this domain.
Primary investigator
- acr
Secondary investigator
- Date:
- 2011-2014
- Theme:
- Web Science
- Funding:
- EPSRC
Digital economy is founded on data. The current trend to develop intelligent, customer-led, interactive, real-time systems requires the ability to handle and interpret vast amounts of data efficiently, quickly, and with a degree of accuracy corresponding to the requirements. This point is underlined very well by two important recent developments. The Smarter Planet initiative, supported by the IBM, envisages 'instrumented, interconnected data systems' where main elements of the physical environment are equipped with sensors constantly exchanging information. Secondly, the new transparency drive of the UK government will make huge data sets available to the public, creating 'an opportunity to build innovative applications which will bring significant economic benefit'.
The need for synthetic geometric methods in data analysis arises because of the large size and of high dimensionality of the sets involved. This proposal will extend recent important theoretic results to create a set of geometric and topological tools for data analysis, placing special emphasis on flexibility, efficiency, and on close alignment with potential practical applications. This is an ideal and a very exciting time to launch a project of this nature, and its results are very likely to have direct and important consequences from the point of view of initiatives mentioned above and many other possible applications. A central theme of the proposal is the study of geometric properties of large data sets at various scales, which corresponds to varying degree of 'sharpness' with which a data set is viewed. For example, in searching large numbers of digital photographs for those that contain pictures of of people one requires a different resolution than when trying to identify a specific person.
This proposal offers a very exciting opportunity for developing pure mathematical methods to the point where they can be directly applied to important, difficult and timely practical problems. The proposed work is adventurous, interdisciplinary, and brings together pure and applied mathematicians, experts in OR, computer science, statistics, and energy systems. Potential for long-term practical applications will be tested in two specific areas of applications within the context of the wider Smarter Plane initiative. A main objective of the project is to develop geometric and cohomological tools of scale- dependent coarse geometry with special emphasis on applications to finite metric spaces and more specifically, to data sets. We will place strong emphasis on methods that can be developed into efficient tools for data analysis, and the research will be informed by specific problems arising from applications which range from the theoretical to the more practical. We will test the theoretical ideas and results two important cases: one, data sets arising from the Open data initiative, and secondly, data generated by large number of sensors monitoring various aspects of the performance of a power grid with the objective to provide an accurate matching between supply and demand.
Primary investigators
- Jacek Brodzki
- Joerge Fliege
- Les Carr
Associated research groups
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Web and Internet Science
- Agents, Interaction and Complexity
- Date:
- 2010-2012
- Themes:
- Web Science, Digital Libraries
- Funding:
- JISC
The DepositMO project aims to develop an effective culture change mechanism that will embed an open access deposit culture into the everyday work of researchers and lecturers. The proposal will extend the capabilities of repositories to exploit the familiar desktop and authoring environments of its users. The objective is to turn the repository into an invaluable extension to the researcherââ¬â¢s desktop in which the deposit of research outputs becomes an everyday activity. The target desktop software suite is Microsoft Office, which is widely used across many disciplines, to maximise impact and benefit. Targeting both EPrints and DSpace, leveraging SWORD and ORE protocols, DepositMO outputs will support a large number of organisations. The ultimate goal is to change the Modus Operandi of researchers so that repository deposit becomes standard practice across a wide number of disciplines using familiar desktop tools.
Primary investigators
- Les Carr
- dt2
- sh94r
Secondary investigator
- Richard Boardman
Partners
- Microsoft Corporation
- CottageLabs
- School of Engineering Sciences, University of Southampton
Associated research groups
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Web and Internet Science
- Date:
- 2010-2010
- Themes:
- Knowledge Technologies, Web Science
- Funding:
- JISC
Primary investigator
- John Darlington
Associated research group
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Date:
- 2010-2010
- Theme:
- Technology Enhanced Learning
- Funding:
- Self funded - no external funds requested
SRAS is a proof of concept project demonstrating the use of a simple turn based game engine in a learning context. The specification was originally given from the School of Nursing to replace a board game they used to train nurses. The idea has been adapted to allow the generic game engine to be used in a variety of different contexts with a redesign of the front end.
Primary investigators
Secondary investigators
- pra1g08
- tb1206
- cw3
Associated research groups
- Electronic and Software Systems
- Learning Societies Lab
- Date:
- 2010-2010
- Themes:
- Digital Libraries, Knowledge Technologies, Innovation in Science, Engineering and Technology Education
- Funding:
- JISC
Open Impact is a project to help collect evidence about the impact of research that has been undertaken in UK universities and to provide it to a range of stakeholders (government, funders, press etc) through an independent third party agency (a learned society). The project focuses on a specific discipline (Computer Science) mediated through a particular society (the British Computer Society). In particular, this project will produce software that helps to make institutional repositories effective in collecting evidence of the impact of their institutionsââ¬â¢ research - evidence that justifies the investment that government and research funders have made and that promotes the role of Universities in society.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigator
Partner
- British Computer Society
Associated research groups
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Learning Societies Lab
- Date:
- 2010-2012
- Themes:
- Web Science, Knowledge Technologies, Virtual Communities and Social Systems, Healthcare in ECS, Interaction with Knowledge and semantics
- Funding:
- Chief Scientist Office (Scotland) (CZH/4/610)
Intervention modelling experiments (IMEs) allow complex interventions to be explored and refined prior to a full-scale trial by delivering key elements of the intervention in a simulation that approximates clinical practice. The current proposal will build on previous CSO-funded work and run a full, web-based IME (WIME) that will advance the methodology of IMEs by directly comparing results with an earlier paper-based IME.
The WIME will be targeted at inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics in primary care. It will systematically develop and evaluate theory-based interventions that correspond to the theoretical, modelling and experimental phases of the MRC Framework. We will compare predictors of GP behaviour obtained from the WIME with those obtained in the paper-based IME and put one of the earlier IMEââ¬â¢s interventions into the WIME and compare it, in an experimental design, with a new intervention developed specifically for web-based delivery. We propose to put the most successful intervention forward into a separately funded full-scale trial.
Primary investigator
- Dr Shaun TreWeek (University of Dundee)
Secondary investigators
- Professor Ian Ricketts (University of Dundee)
- Dr Jillian Francis (University of Aberdeen)
- Professor Martin Eccles (University of Newcastle)
- Dr Debbie Bonetti (University of Dundee)
- Professor Nigel Pitts (University of Dundee)
- Dr Graeme MacLennan (University of Aberdeen)
- Professor Frank Sullivan (University of Dundee)
- Mark Weal
Associated research groups
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Learning Societies Lab
- Date:
- 2008-2011
- Themes:
- Web Science, Grid and Distributed Computing, Virtual Communities and Social Systems, Healthcare in ECS, Interaction with Knowledge and semantics
- Funding:
- ESRC (RES-149-25-1069)
Interventions designed to influence people's behaviour ('behavioural interventions') are a fundamental part of daily life, whether in the form of personal advice, support and skills-training from professionals (e.g. educators, doctors) or general information disseminated through the media. However, personal advice and support are very costly, and it is impossible to provide everyone with 24 hour access to personal guidance on managing all their problems. Interactive technology means that the advice can now be specifically 'tailored' to address the particular situation, concerns, beliefs and preferences of each individual, and intensive daily support can be provided for behaviour change in the form of reminders, personalised feedback regarding progress and overcoming obstacles, help with planning, and opportunities for communication with peers.
Currently each intervention is programmed from scratch individually, with the result that the initial development costs are greater for internet-based than for traditionally delivered interventions, and once programmed they cannot easily be modified. This seriously limits the number of interventions that can be developed and evaluated, and acts as a barrier to innovation and enhancement of interventions by researchers.
The aim of this project is to develop, evaluate and disseminate an internet-based set of resources that will allow researchers to flexibly create and modify two fundamental dimensions of behavioural interventions: a) providing tailored advice; b) supporting sustained behaviour. The LifeGuide will increase the number of researchers who can engage in this type of research, opening it up to those with limited funding (e.g. junior researchers and research students). We will test and demonstrate the value of LifeGuide by involving a network of researchers.
Primary investigator
- Professor Lucy Yardley
Secondary investigators
- Susan Michie (UCL)
- Gary Wills
- David De Roure
- Mark Weal
Associated research groups
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Learning Societies Lab
- Date:
- 2009-
- Themes:
- Technology Enhanced Learning, Virtual Communities and Social Systems, Interaction with Knowledge and semantics
- Funding:
- HEA Enhancement Academy
This is an ongoing initiative which has impact across the whole university which is part of the current remit of the Curriculum Innovation Programme. A wide group of stakeholders, including representatives from all faculties, iSolutions, ECS and SUSU are meeting regularly to develop the vision of the future Southampton Learning Environment. During the summer of 2010 a number of student interns will develop proof of concept components for the project. Funding for related activity has been gained via a JISC grant complemented by core funding from the University
Primary investigators
- hcd
- saw
- Debra Morris
Secondary investigators
- Pete Hancock
- Kenji Takeda
- Heidi Solheim
- Janice Rippon
- Pat Usher
- Mark Brown
- Fiona Grindey
- Marcus Grace
- Trevor Bryant
- Alex Furr
- Vicky Wright
- Dave Martin
- Jamie Ings
- ji1x07
- amb1g08
Associated research group
- Learning Societies Lab
- Date:
- 2010-
- Theme:
- Accessible Technologies
Measuring progression using video evidence contained in In-Folio
Objective
To have an application that can hold video evidence of learners activities and allow for them to be searched by learner activity and or date to allow the video clip to be viewed. When searching by learner and activity a selection of clips from different dates needs to be displayed with the facility to compare two occasions preferably on screen at the same time.
This project was originally developed for the Star College and other specialist FE colleges but is now being adopted by groups supporting adults with learning disabilities as well as younger students in specialist units. Support is ongoing.
Primary investigators
Secondary investigator
- Sebastian Skuse
Partners
- John Sewell, JISC TechDis Associate
- Star College
- ESPA College
- Rix Centre
Associated research group
- Web and Internet Science