UserMedia - School of Computing and Communications

Transcription

FP7-ICT-2007-1
STREP proposal
UserMedia
08/05/07 V1.0
Small or medium-scale focused research project (STREP) proposal
ICT Call 1
FP7-ICT-2007-1
[User - Centred Media Management]
UserMedia
Date of preparation: 07-May-2007
Version number: V1.0
Participant no.
*
1 (Coordinator)
2
3
4
5
6
7
Participant organisation name
Futurmatix Ltd
University of Lancaster
University of Mannheim
University of Oslo
Blue Order
Tandberg
Primetel
Part. short
name
Futu
Ulanc
UMan
UiO
Blue
Tand
Prime
Country
UK
UK
D
N
D
N
CYP
Work programme topics addressed
Objective ICT-2007.1.5: Networked Media : a) Interoperable multimedia network and
service infrastructures that offer a seamless, personalised and trusted experience.
Name of the coordinating person: [Mr. Lindsay Holman]
e-mail: [lindsay.holman@futurmatix.com]
fax: [+44 (0)1259 726620]
Proposal Part B: Page 1 of 82
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PROPOSAL ABSTRACT
Overview
Support for the management, storage and sharing of digital media has, in recent years, fallen behind the
ability of users to create or access new digital content. The wide uptake of personal digital media devices
such as camera phones, portable media players, digital cameras and Internet based media delivery and
sharing platforms has revolutionised the way users produce, share and consume media. However, the very
success of these developments means that users are struggling to manage significant quantities of valuable
digital assets on multiple (often) mobile devices using tools that are ill-suited to the task.
Problems related to the management of content in production, handling and distribution have been
addressed in the professional content world through the use of metadata, workflow support and content
storage systems supporting full end-to-end content management systems. These provide a very efficient
way of handling content in a large scale professional content operation. However, these systems are
designed for enterprise level use and are not well suited for personal content management, i.e. in
environments where users and their devices are mobile and often disconnected. More specifically, the
centralised content ingest model found in such systems does not map well to a pervasive world consisting
of many individual users, devices and services. Equally, the highly structured metadata schema and well
defined user roles that support content based workflows across an organisation’s departments are not
applicable to the individual.
UserMedia aims to solve these problems by developing a new generation of ‘personalised content
management’ systems based on the concepts from the professional domain, but addressing the challenges
of pervasive, distributed and disconnected media. UserMedia will be fully distributed, and offer first class
support for disconnection and user centric workflows.
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Table of contents
1 Scientific and technical quality ...................................................................................................................5
1.1Concept and objectives..........................................................................................................................5
1.1.1 Motivational scenarios...................................................................................................................6
1.1.2 Scientific and Technological Objectives.......................................................................................8
1.1.3 Relationship of UserMedia S&T Objectives to the topics addressed by the call. ......................12
1.2Progress beyond the state-of-the-art in User-Centred Media Management.........................................14
1.1.4 Core research areas for UserMedia..............................................................................................14
1.1.5 Related IST projects....................................................................................................................20
1.1.6 Beyond the state of the art: UserMedia innovation.....................................................................21
1.1.7 Patents and patent searching........................................................................................................22
1.3Scientific and Technological methodology and associated work plan...............................................25
1.1.8 Overall strategy of the work plan................................................................................................25
1.1.9 Timing of the different WPs and their components.....................................................................26
1.1.10 Detailed UserMedia Work Description ....................................................................................27
1.1.11 Graphical presentation of the UserMedia components showing their interdependencies ........45
1.1.12 Risk Management......................................................................................................................45
2 Implementation..........................................................................................................................................49
2.1 Management structure and procedures...............................................................................................49
2.1.1 Organisational Structure..............................................................................................................49
2.1.2 Individual Responsibilities..........................................................................................................50
2.1.3 Legal obligations and IPR issues.................................................................................................52
2.1.4 Communication flow Mechanisms and Procedures....................................................................53
2.1.5 Conflict Resolution......................................................................................................................53
2.1.6 Decision-Making Mechanisms....................................................................................................54
2.1.7 Match to Complexity & Scale of the Project...............................................................................54
1.4Individual participants.........................................................................................................................56
2.1.8 Futurmatix Limited .....................................................................................................................56
2.1.9 Lancaster University....................................................................................................................58
2.1.10 University of Mannheim ...........................................................................................................60
2.1.11 University of Oslo......................................................................................................................62
2.1.12 Blue Order ................................................................................................................................64
2.1.13 Tandberg ASA..........................................................................................................................66
2.1.14 Primetel......................................................................................................................................68
1.5The UserMedia Consortium as a whole ..............................................................................................70
1.6Resources to be committed .................................................................................................................72
2.1.15 Other Major Costs......................................................................................................................72
2.1.16 Mobilisation of Resources.........................................................................................................72
2.1.17 Resource Integration and Financial Plan...................................................................................72
3 Impact........................................................................................................................................................73
3.1Expected impacts listed in the work programme.................................................................................73
2.1.18 Social Impact.............................................................................................................................74
2.1.19 Necessary steps..........................................................................................................................74
2.1.20 Work at the European level.......................................................................................................75
3.1Dissemination and exploitation of results, and management of IP......................................................76
3.1.1 Plans for the explotation of project outcomes.............................................................................76
3.1.2 Plan For The Dissemination of Knowledge.................................................................................78
3.1.3 Management of Intellectual Property..........................................................................................79
4 Ethical Issues.............................................................................................................................................81
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4.1General Ethical Issues regarding UserMedia.......................................................................................81
4.2Countries where Research will be undertaken.....................................................................................81
4.3Ethical Committees / Organisations required to be approached..........................................................81
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1 Scientific and technical quality
1.1
Concept and objectives
The key aim of the proposed project is to develop an architecture and underlying systems support to assist
users in managing digital content in mobile and pervasive environments.
Support for the management, storage and sharing of digital media has, in recent years, fallen behind the
ability of users to create or access new digital content. This situation has been driven by two key
underlying trends. Firstly, there is a continuing increase in the number of mobile and fixed personal
computing devices (including non-traditional devices such as media players) owned by each user. This has
resulted in a changing model of usage that undermines existing single device solutions. Secondly, there is
a continuing shift to digital media for both professionally and personally created content and hence users
not only have increasing quantities of professional digital media but are adding user created media at a
growing rate. These developments mean that many current users are attempting to manage significant
quantities of valuable digital assets on multiple (often) mobile and fixed devices using tools that are illsuited to the task.
Some attempts to improve the underlying tools and technologies have been made. However these
generally fall into two categories. Either the user is forced to manage media on a central home device,
often their main PC and often using a variety of programs each targeted at a different media type, or users
elect to use the increasing number of web services, e.g. MySpace or Bebo which handle multiple media
but force all content to be uploaded and stored on a centralized web repository.
It is our belief that a significant opportunity exists for European industry to develop an alternative
approach to user media management. This approach will accept that user media is distributed across a
range of devices and that users move and change media in a variety of ways. Rather than forcing a single
PC or centralised web server approach, it will offer support for management of media across a range of
devices. These range from consumer devices (mobile and stationary) to professional communication
equipment such as tele-conferencing and CSCW applications. This approach, if intuitive and simple from
the end user perspective, will offer significant benefits to end users.
To achieve the aim of creating an intuitive and simple media management solution that naturally reflects
end user behaviour and habits, we must provide facilities closer to those of a content management system
than a traditional file system or web based repository and any solution we propose must be firmly
grounded in an understanding of users needs, models and processes. Thus, UserMedia will lay the
foundations for engineers to construct a new class of mobile data solution based on the concepts of content
management but reflecting the need to support mobile content creation, management and access in a
multi-device new-media environment that is supportive of user needs and mental models.
In support of this aim, we have three main goals:
Goal 1: develop an open and flexible architectural model for personal media management in pervasive
and partially disconnected environment. This model, based on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
model will serve as the basis for our core technology but will also ensure that any platform related work
we develop will support open extensions. This will be demonstrated through the inclusion of a workflow
management and some example services (namely video indexing and video adaptation) that support the
users in their interaction with the content. A key benefit will be that such an architecture will move away
from closed CMS solution and should enable a secondary market for media manipulation tools and
integration with content communication and communication tools suitable for SME development.
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Goal 2: To develop new media management technologies. It is expected that although we can benefit
from some existing media management tools and approaches, our user-centric focus will necessitate us
innovating in a set of core areas. These will include distributed & disconnected storage, device integration,
flexible content and user centric metadata schemes, video indexing, and novel search and adaptive access
technologies for distributed multi-device networks
Goal 3: To validate all work via user trails. User centric media management needs to be assessed through
real use by end users. UserMedia will run live trials that will engage actual user populations, in semi
commercial and public settings, to validate our approach. Mental models will be derived from users’
actual use while they are managing digital media. The analysis of these models will allow the
development of alternative conceptual models to better support such tasks. The process will be iterative to
ensure that live customer feedback is used to redirect and enhance the project as early as possible, to
maximise the applicability and exploitability of project results.
1.1.1
Motivational scenarios
The motivation for UserMedia comes from the following observations:
•
•
•
There is a proliferation of professional and user devices and media services
There has been a massive increase in user creation and sharing of digital content
There has been rapid growth of web based personalised media repositories
Consider the following example scenarios:
UserMedia as a platform for Group work
Joe, Bill and Cathy are working on an environmental sciences project studying the impact of wind
farms on protected ground-nesting bird species. They work collaboratively on this task with
students at the University of Oslo with whom they share their results. As part of their fieldwork,
Joe visits a local wind farm and takes several photos of nest sites using his new camera. When he
gets home, he transfers the images to his PC over his wireless network, so that he can examine the
pictures in more detail and update his field notes. Using UserMedia, Joe can see at a glance that
his new photos have not yet been included with those Bill took earlier in the week. Joe marks the
new photos for sharing on the online project photo gallery.
Later, Bill and Cathy see that Joe has posted some new photos. Cathy, who is a specialist on
Skylark nesting sites, thinks they look interesting and makes a copy of two of them, crops them to
focus on the important evidence and annotates them with her conclusions. She marks them for
sharing with Joe and Bill.
Joe runs into the others at the campus coffee bar. They walk over to the nearby e-Campus display
and he shows them all the photos he has included in the report. They realise Cathy has the two
annotated photos on her laptop. She adds them into the presentation supported by the Wifi based
campus network.
They are now ready for their weekly co-ordination meeting with their project partners at the
University of Oslo. They use professional video conferencing equipment with an integrated CSCW
space available in their department. They share their results with the Oslo students and also have
access to their results. The discussion is recorded and made part of the project documentation.
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They now have all the photographic evidence and material needed to finish the report. They've
worked so well as a team, they're sure to get a great mark.
Technical walkthrough of the above scenario: When Joe, Bill and Cathy start their project, they
set up a UserMedia shared content pool that they can all see. When Joe syncs his camera, Joe
'connects' his phone to his project content pool via his home network. Using the content indexes
and journal of offline operations, UserMedia is able to quickly build a complete picture of the new
media Joe has on his camera and that Bill has uploaded recently. As Joe annotates the photos, he is
telling UserMedia that the content belongs to their shared content pool and how it fits into the
users' workflow (uploading to the online photo album in this case). Bill and Cathy can use
UserMedia visualisations of the content pool, to easily identify important changes, such as the new
content Joe has added to the pool. UserMedia can also track content versions, helping Cathy keep
control of her content in the project. Like Joe, Cathy can mark the content for sharing with Bill and
Joe and the system will look after synchronising their shared view and transferring content from
and to their associated devices. So when they meet in the coffee shop, and their personal devices
are co-present, UserMedia identifies inconsistencies in their individual views of the shared content,
in this case helping Bill and Joe realise Cathy has new photos which they should see and include in
their group presentation. By merging their content pool temporarily with the public display
device, the group can easily view their media on the nearby screen. When they leave the café the
association is broken and the display will no longer have access to their content. When they set-up
the video conference they make the content available through the UserMedia system whose open
architecture allows sharing via a professional conferencing system. The discussion is recorded and
also becomes part of the content pool. It will be transferred into the project folders of the
participating groups managed by UserMedia.
UserMedia in the home
George lives in Nicosia with his wife and two children while his mother still lives in Athens.
George and his family are planning to visit her soon. They want to take some photos and video to
show her. Using his phone he connects to his family server at home. He can see that there are
some videos they took last weekend with the children, plus a couple of photos on his wife's phone
that she hasn't shared yet. He sends her a text message asking her to send them. Browsing
through the videos, he selects two that he'd really like to take to show his mother and deletes one
that the children took when they were playing with the camera yesterday. In his wife's photos
there's a great shot of the whole family.
By the time they meet at home for dinner, the high quality versions of his wife's photos have been
automatically copied to their family photo album. After dinner, the family sits down to watch
some TV. They decide to finish the message while they're all sitting together. Browsing their
entire content store on the TV, they all agree which of the photos and videos they'd like to show
Granny. They will access their home media from Granny's house when they visit. Everything is
ready and they know she'll have a lovely surprise.
Technical walkthrough of the above scenario : The family have a UserMedia content pool set
up, this includes all their personal devices including the set top box in their living room and their
mobile phones. As George syncs the view on his phone with the home server, he can see the index
of where content resides, even some photos that the system knows are on his wife's phone that
have not yet been copied anywhere else. George's wife can simply mark the photos as shared and
UserMedia will allow George to access the content. It may be necessary to create a low resolution
version if George is just browsing on his mobile.
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When George selects videos from the home server, UserMedia automatically adapts the video
quality from DV to a format more suitable for streaming to his phone. When he performs
housekeeping tasks offline (in this case deleting media), he knows that the system will synchronise
these changes when he gets home or within range of a suitable network. He likes the fact that he
doesn't have to go to each device in turn to remove all of the copies.
When George's wife switches on her phone, the system can get access to the new photos
(providing she is happy to share them) and can start copying these back to the home server (that's
their workflow).
When the family are all together and their devices are all connectable, it is easy to collaboratively
browse and manage content using any of their personal devices. In this case they mark up which
content they'd like to show Granny. They can access this content remotely from Granny's house
when they visit, or can sync it with one of their personal media devices so that they can make
changes during their trip.
Figure 1 Users’ share a unified view of all of their content regardless of device.
The essential concepts illustrated by these scenarios (figure 1) are the user centric intentional nature of the
interactions and how the users’ workflows are enabled by the UserMedia system as and when devices
connect to each other. Unlike conventional or web based CMSs, UserMedia is a distributed system;
operations affecting the media (like labelling, editing or sharing it) are communicated opportunistically.
As the metadata and indeces converge and changes are propagated, the user is able to see where the copies
of their media are (even if they are uploaded to online services) and who they are shared with. Devices
and services are not permanently connected; UserMedia must explicitly support offline and online
operation. This extends throughout the system; so the user is able to see which of the copies of their
content are currently available to them (online) and which are offline. The key aim is that users start to
think about how they work with all their content, not just the content they have immediate access to.
1.1.2
Scientific and Technological Objectives
Driven by user needs and developments in the personal media space, UserMedia will develop a distributed
pervasive content management system providing a seamless, personalised and trusted user experience that
integrates with existing and upcoming content tools and devices (see figure 2).
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Figure 2: The UserMedia System Concept.
The project aims to innovate in two key areas:
An open and flexible distributed architecture for personal media: In contrast to existing professional
content management systems a key focus in UserMedia is to develop an architectural model for content
management that is both distributed, to reflect the distributed nature of individual users daily activities
and open, to ensure that professional and consumer tools and services can exploit and work with the core
platform. The architecture will encompass the following key features:
- The use of an extended Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). This approach, which is only just
being adopted by some leading edge CMS, will ensure that the UserMedia personal content
management system uses state of the art technologies to ensure an open and flexible model
- In-built architectural support for distributed metadata and media management models to allow
a fully distributed architecture
- Flexible support for integration of workflows and value added services such as video indexing
and annotation.
- Architectural support for the full integration of professional and consumer devices
These key innovations flow from our desire to support a fully distributed and partially disconnected model
throughout our entire architecture, which results in a set of technological innovations underlying our
distributed media management technologies.
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Distributed media management technologies: Driven out of our innovative distributed architecture are a
set of underlying technological innovations that ensure that distributed media is managed in a seamless,
pervasive and trusted manner. These technologies include:
- distributed metadata including support for traditional semantic metadata, i.e. data about the
actual media itself, as well as logical metadata which describes location of media, network
topology, relationship between media items as well as user preferences, interest etc.
- distributed data and storage which uses the distributed metadata to manage such issues as
physical placement, replication and caching in support for remote and disconnected access.
- Workflow engines that supported distributed and potentially disconnected workflows.
- Computationally light video indexing and adaptation technologies suitable for mobile devices
such as laptops and PDAs.
Core to our architectural and technological innovations is our focus on a user centric approach to the
problem space. Our goal is to design the UserMedia system in such a way as to ease the management
burden for end users, enhance the usability of the system and enable them to access and manipulate media
in ways that map naturally to their personal models and practices.
Particular benefits to users include:
• UserMedia will give the user an overview of their assets and of all assets that are available for the
end-user thus providing seamless content access.
• UserMedia provides seamless content access, keeping the physical location of media transparent
where desirable, to ensure ease of use.
• Improved searching and indexing using distributed metadata models will enhance user access to
their media.
• UserMedia will provide workflow support that maps naturally to end users models and existing
processes rather than forcing them to adapt to the system itself by changing their working habits.
Distributed metadata
Central to our user centric approach is the underlying metadata architecture and associated technologies.
As highlighted above one of our key scientific and technological aims is to develop a fully distributed
metadata system. Metadata within UserMedia consists of two parts, semantic metadata and logical
metadata.
Semantic metadata describes the actual content of the data. This metadata might be automatically
generated through content services or through manual annotation. Since one of our goals is to support a
variety of end user devices for content capture, manipulation and consumption, we plan to use an
established and relatively simple metadata model such as Dublin Core [6].
Logical metadata plays a more central role in the UserMedia project and represents one of the areas that
we plan to advance the state of the art. Logical metadata, representing information about formats, copies
and location of the media, is crucial to:
• manage the logical view of the distributed content: for the mobile and pervasive environment this
means not only that each node needs to maintain the logical metadata for the content that is stored
on it, but also to co-operate with other nodes in order to enable all nodes to have an overview of all
available content.
• managing relationships between different versions of a content object. Partly this is to support
classical versioning, ie version v1, v2 etc, but also to support different representations of the same
content object. For example, a video clip might be represented in MPEG-2 and JPEG2000 and its
resolution might be reduced in order to display it on low resolution displays.
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•
managing end-user personal data, device descriptions and overall network topology. This type of
non-classical metadata is necessary to ensure that UserMedia can adequately support distribute
media and users.
This metadata support, along with our other key innovations can be placed in an overall architecture as
shown in figure 3. The core of the system is the metadata and storage management. Content services made
up of video indexing and video adaptation are used to enhance content management. The workflow
management deals with the complexity of interacting with content in a pervasive content environment. It
is envisaged that various (device dependent) user applications are supported through the UserMedia
architecture. This includes professional equipment such as video conferencing as well as consumer
devices.
The depicted architecture illustrates the conceptual structure of the system. The lower half of the diagram
(main rectangle) depicts the management part that will be present on each UserMedia node. In the upper
half of the diagram, the workflow management will control the interaction of the different systems parts. It
is used by the application to access, use and share content. The workflow management in turn controls the
content services (i.e. video indexing and video adaptation) and keeps track of their performance. Video
indexing uses analysis of the actual media and generates additional semantic metadata. The video
adaptation service is used to transcode media into different formats. It will generate a new version of the
media as well as related logical metadata.
App1
Workflow
Mgnt.
App2
Video
Indexing
Video
Adaptation
semantic
User
Mgnt.
Allocation
&
Replication
Mgnt.
logical
Applications
Content
Services
Metadata
management
Data placement
Storage
Figure 3: Preliminary Architecture of the UserMedia distributed and pervasive Content Management System.
Distribution issues are an inherent part of the metadata management and the allocation and replication
component. The storage component is responsible for persistent storage of content and to provide read and
write access to the content according to the associated user rights. It should be noted that this component
must be very device specific. In small nodes, like mobile phones, digital cameras etc., persistent storage
might be given through memory cards, like SD or MMC, while laptops and PCs have a hard disk and large
servers might use RAID systems or Storage Area Networks (SANs). Data placement would be typically
implemented through a file system etc. which keeps track of where the content is located on the node’s
storage device.
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The task of logical metadata management is, as previously stated, inherently distributed and covers two
key areas where we plan to innovate.
- Logical metadata capture. Efficient protocols need to be developed to discover existing
content in the network and to announce local content. One starting point for this task will be
the Global Metadata Manager (GMDM) developed within the IST FP6 MIDAS1 project and
brought into UserMedia through the University of Oslo. End-user, device, and network
topology related metadata has to be gathered through monitoring and discovery mechanisms,
which are outside of this component, but which use the service of the logical metadata
management to store and distribute this data.
- Logical metadata distribution. Once gathered, distribution of logical metadata is a complex
area and one where again we will develop new strategies. Obviously the naive approach of
distributing/replicating all metadata to all nodes is unrealistic because there will be a large
overhead in terms of for example network traffic and not all nodes need all metadata.
Topology aware application and end-user driven replication of content is one of the core research topics
for the Allocation and Replication Management component. We use the term allocation to refer to the task
of deciding where content should be stored. While it seems natural to store content on the node where it
has been created, e.g., on the CS storage card of a digital camera, it seems also natural to move this data to
the end-users PC etc. as soon as this device gets connected in order to free the restricted storage space on
the digital camera. Another example would be, if the system knows that another end-user is interested in
all pictures of a certain topic (or even made by a certain end-user) then the system creates a copy of the
new picture as soon as it has been taken. Both the devices and the end-users preferences need to be taken
into account for such decisions.
In summary, the scientific and technological objectives of UserMedia are to support distributed and
pervasive content management to provide a seamless user experience. The project will develop an overall
architecture and then the underlying technologies needed to implement that architecture. These will be
integrated into a full system platform and validated via two long-term user trials. Key to the success of the
project and fundamental to our approach is specific consideration of the variety of roles a future user can
adopt (consumers, producers, prosumer, etc.) and intuitive end-user support for creation, handling and
sharing processes.
1.1.3
Relationship of UserMedia S&T Objectives to the topics addressed by the call.
UserMedia addresses several of the main call objectives directly and most others indirectly. Its main
objectives lie in the target outcome a) Interoperable multimedia network and service infrastructure. In
particular one of our core aims is to develop a seamless and personalized experience for media
management by end users when they use different devices, adopting a variety of roles (such as consumer,
producer and manager of media). Thus, objectives i.) multimedia services and application, ii.) home
management and control services, and iii.) media content for users in a variety of roles locations, contexts
and mobility scenarios are at the centre of the UserMedia project.
UserMedia also focuses on an unstructured approach to media, using advanced metadata techniques to
help users understand, tag and manage collections of unstructured media. This is addressing issues related
to unstructured distribution, delivery, sharing, storage and intelligent retrieval of media as referred to in
the third bullet point of target outcome a). Through the video indexing work and video adaptation work,
elements of the second bullet point of target outcome a) are also addressed. In particular these are the
automatic and intuitive enrichment of the media through generating additional metadata.
1
MIDAS is described in more detail in the state of the art section (1.2)
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UserMedia is designed to offer an end-to-end system for the intuitive storage/handling/search and
management of user media assets as mentioned in point i.) of target outcome b.). The system will maintain
the integrity and quality of the media as requested in the second bullet point of target outcome a). The
development of a set of search tools which use advanced video analysis and indexing techniques provide
intuitive and user friendly search facilities as addressed by point i) of target outcome b).
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1.2
Progress beyond the state-of-the-art in User-Centred Media Management
A number of different areas converge in UserMedia, in this section we survey the major related
technologies. These include existing Content Management Systems (CMS) in the professional and the
Web space. These systems have been designed for managing multimedia content within specific contexts.
Another important area of interest which is developing rapidly is personal content and storage
management for private use, including web based online community portals such as MySpace and
YouTube. Finally, we also discuss supporting intrinsic components within CMS, including workflow
aspects, distributed databases and auxiliary content services such as video indexing and video adaptation,
which play a key-role within the project.
1.1.4
1.1.4.1
Core research areas for UserMedia
Professional Content Management Systems (CMS)
Professional CMS have been designed to support the entire workflow chain of a content producer such as
broadcasters, film companies, radio stations, record companies, publishing houses, etc. [20]. These
systems handle and administer a large amount of content as well as metadata, deal with different formats
and provide support for various applications and user groups. The communication requirements of the
actual media can vary between a few Kb/s to hundreds of Mb/s (e.g., MPEG-4 based video [26]). The
metadata is typically a structured representation of the data related to, and describing content. Metadata
can be represented in data models (e.g., the BBC’s SMEFTM [4]) or description schemes (e.g., MPEG-7
[19], Dublin Core [6]). Very often metadata is encoded using XML [2]; for the professional domain a
combination of the SMPTE Metadata Dictionary and the Key-Length-Value protocol is proposed [31].
Sometimes media and metadata is handled together for instance within MPEG-2 Multiple Program
Transport Streams [20] or in content files (e.g., MXF [31] or BWF [1]). Professional CMS are open in a
sense that they allow integration with other systems (e.g. production systems, non-linear editing systems,
automation systems, rights managements systems, ERP systems, etc.), and can handle different media and
integrate with all kinds of metadata representation. Large CMS are also implemented in a loosely coupled
manner with multiple storage systems (online storage, storage area networks, network attached storage,
etc.) to host the media objects, and multiple databases and information systems integrating different
departments and content views. There are a number of approaches to query multiple databases that are part
of the same system. A broker manager concept appears to be the most flexible, scalable and extensible
solution. Advanced professional CMS also have additional services for content indexing, transcoding, etc.
to better support the content management process. Further, some CMS provide workflow support,
resource management, advanced system administration, etc. Figure 4 gives an example of an advanced
CMS architecture [20].
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Applications
Session Management
Plan&
Draft
Import
Logging Browsing Ordering Cataloging
Commissioning
Ingest
Retrieval
Ingest
Import
Editing
Playout
Export Conversion
Core
Essence
Management
Device
Management
Messaging
Configuration
Remote Installation
Workspace
User Management
Accounting&Licensing
Watchfolder
Web
Retrieval
Process Monitoring
Resource Management
Watermarking
System
System
Administration
Administration
Administration
Services
Analysis Ordering
System
System
Mgmt
Mgmt
Naming
Event Logging
Export
Workflow Management
Task Management
Transaction Control
Rough –
Cut
Job
Job
Mgmt
Mgmt
Data
Management
Figure 4 : CMS Software Architecture
A modular application design allows the implementation of different use cases and user views on top of
the CMS core and services plane. This, together with the user management gives the users an individual
view on the content tailored towards a certain role and individual needs. However, professional CMS are
usually representing a centrally designed and well managed system. They have a limited number of welldefined import and access points and a strong user management with controlled user interaction.
Individual users are using the overall system resources and are also contributing to the organisational
content pool (despite individual user views they might enjoy). Departments might act as “content” owners
but generally individual users do not have content under their own control. Further, despite users
accessing content remotely, this has to be classified as content access and not content sharing. That is,
content “belongs” to the system that manages it and is used by the users. In contrast, within UserMedia
individual users are the owner of their content which can be placed on different storage devices and is
accessed through a number of access devices. The system manages, locates and optimises the storage but
does not control the content. Thus, content management becomes much more of a policy issue. An
additional level of complexity is added by the fact that different user devices are also part of the storage
infrastructures which are heterogeneous in their capacity and capability.
1.1.4.2
Workflow
Over the last decade, workflow management has emerged as the key functionality in state-of-the-art
software systems. Initially conceived as a tool to manage resources and assignments in well-defined
production processes, nowadays workflow management is used to control complex software systems and
to integrate both human and machine workflows into overarching business process management. Hence,
the intelligence of a solution is no longer hard coded in individual system components, but is maintained
in configurable workflow scripts. The system components themselves – and this also includes human
operators –only provide functions required to fulfil tasks as assigned when processing the workflow.
This workflow centric approach to systems design works very well together with the architectural
paradigm of Service-Oriented Architectures. Here, the various services provide the individual system
functions, while a specific service (the workflow engine) provides the ability to process configurable
workflow scripts. This scenario has been successfully applied, e.g., in enterprise class Content
Management Systems (CMS) in broadcast, such as Blue Order’s Media Archive.
The importance of workflow engines in today’s software and systems engineering is also clearly visible
from the fact that this technology slowly evolves into a mainstream product feature in operating systems,
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large databases and in application servers – it becomes a part of the various middleware layers. Examples
for this evolution are:
• Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation (part of Microsoft .NET 3.0, Microsoft Vista, and the
upcoming Longhorn Server OS)
• Oracle Workflow (part of Oracle 9i and 10g database / application server)
• jBOSS jBPM (part of the jBOSS application server).
However, none of these solutions works in a fully and truly distributed environment. Research has been
conducted on the distributed, adaptive, execution of workflows, but such concepts have not yet been
applied and verified in large scale distributed systems. Within UserMedia, these concepts will be refined,
adapted to the needs of a distributed, device-centric CMS, and, for the first time, will be implemented in a
real-world scenario.
1.1.4.3
Web based Content Management Systems
The second type of CMS are CMS for Web-pages and documents. A number of web-based CMS systems
exist. They are mainly used to provide content flexibly and dynamically for Web-pages. Their main
purpose is to provide a repository for web content. The content is to a large extent discreet media content
(e.g. text, graphic, images, etc.) but more and more video and audio segments are also becoming part of
the offered content. The currently available systems range from small scale systems such as SearchQuest
[30] and Ektron [7] to more complex systems such as Joomla! [14] and Mambo [18]. The basic
functionality offered is to create, edit, import content and annotate it with metadata. Usually the metadata
set is configurable and not based on any standard. The content is linked into the Web pages. Style sheets
are used to provide the layout and appearance of the Web site whereas the actual content is provided by
the CMS. At present these systems are centralised with a prescribed workflow. More complex systems
provide sophisticated user management that allows different user interaction. However, they do not
provide support for dynamic content acquisition, neither do they support distributed content placement
and interaction.
1.1.4.4
Web centric solutions for personal content storage and management.
A traditional approach to resolving the complexity of personal content management is the use of a web
accessible content storage system whereby users are able to upload content and are provided with a set of
basic management tools. Typically these solutions fall into two categories; vertical solutions as part of a
specific application or more generic content storage for users often as a web publishing/presence solution:
Several examples of vertical solutions exist – typically they are focused on particular media type and are
usually tied to a client side application. One such example is the Photo-Album service offered by the
mobile service provider, Orange. It provides a generic facility to upload and store photos and a set of
associated services to publish and print. A similar approach is taken by Nokia with its LifeBlog
application. Here the set of media types is expanded beyond photos to include video, text, audio etc and
the application provides both a home PC storage component and online component.
A variety of more generic content management services have been developed. This include services such
as Flickr which are open and not tied to a specific client application, but non-the-less focused on one
media type, or more general solutions such as MySpace which provide support for a variety of media
types (as well as community features). Perhaps one of the more interesting approaches to personal content
management in recent years has been the development by Google of its suite of personal management
tools. Using a linking strategy, they have combined support for mail (a text based form of personal
content) with Picasa’s support for photos, PIM support such as calendar and contacts and recently a full
online document management and edit facility via Google Documents. Coupled with their video support
from their recent purchase of YouTube they have now built up a comprehensive, although loosely
connected suite of personal content management tools.
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These web centric, centralized service solutions are popular with users because they attempt to address the
fundamental problem that we have identified in this proposal – users have an increasing quantity of media
and are struggling to manage it. However they offer limited features and serious constraints – for example,
they generally do not address the issue of replication and multiple copies, they have no real support for
disconnected operation and offer no help with workflow and media tracking. Lastly, in nearly all cases,
media annotation is user specific with limited capabilities.
1.1.4.5
Distributed Databases
Databases are one of the major technologies that have to be considered in the context of UserMedia.
Particularly relevant are distributed databases connected via networks where connectivity, topology, and
end-device resources may vary. Due to the dynamic conditions under which the UserMedia platform is
required to function, relevant distributed database technologies should not rely on a fixed repository or
server structures. Commercial product offerings like Sybase [11] are based on availability of one or more
server nodes and are thus not suited. By providing a global database abstraction over a MANET,
AmbientDB [9] adds high-level data management functionalities to a distributed middleware layer. This is
a non-centralised, ad-hoc/ dynamic approach. The approach describes a distributed database system for
MANETs, but has to our knowledge failed to provide any running prototypes or software. A service
oriented and data-centric approach is DBGlobe [27], where devices form data sharing communities that
together make up an ad-hoc database of the collection of data on devices that exist around a specific
context (e.g., location or user). The solution relies on a set of fixed network servers, which is a drawback.
Bayou [36] lets mobile users replicate a database, modify it, and synchronize with any other replicas when
inconsistent versions are encountered. It relies however on a centralized server. A final related system is
Roam [28] which is a system for nomadic users (like PDAs) and combines a client-server and peer-to-peer
model to provide the nomadic users with shared volumes of data.
Another class of relevant systems is solutions based on tuple spaces. The Limone coordination model [8]
is based on Linda tuple spaces [10], but is tailored towards MANETs through multiple tuple spaces, each
governed by a mobile agent. The tuple space paradigm provides a coordination model based on an agentcentric perspective on coordination, and although Limone can accomplish data sharing through
appropriate use of tuple spaces, the complexity of the mental models and corresponding data structures
required in UserMedia, does not seem to fit well into this paradigm.
None of the above mentioned systems support different strategies for data replication. [17] is an example
of a system with an adaptable replication schema. It chooses replication strategies based on requirements
provided by the applications and depending on the execution environment. Also relevant within
UserMedia are synchronization standards (e.g., Open Mobile Alliance [23]). The implemented support is
for the synchronization of data between pairs of mobile nodes.
1.1.4.6
Video Indexing
Video indexing is a very relevant research topic in the multimedia community. Major goals are to identify
the structure of a video and to recognize its semantic content. Examples of successfully applied techniques
are the recognition of faces or the identification of superimposed text. Other typical tasks are the
identification of sports videos, the detection of indoor or outdoor scenes, or the identification of image
content (e.g., faces). A large project in the area of indexing and information retrieval is the Informedia
project [13] of the Carnegie Mellon University. The project has developed new approaches for automated
video and audio indexing, search and retrieval, navigation, and visualization. Its focus is on the search and
retrieval of TV and radio news.
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The focus of the UserMedia project is very different for several reasons: We do not have high-quality
content in the UserMedia project but expect amateur videos such as home videos. Most research projects
focus on the indexing of high-quality videos like TV news. We want to develop new algorithms, which
reliably operate on amateur videos. Our aim is to create a distributed system in contrast to all other major
video indexing systems. In this context it has to be considered that the resources of the mobile devices are
strictly limited. Therefore, new processes and indexing algorithms are required for the UserMedia project.
1.1.4.7
Video Adaptation
Videos are no longer limited to television or personal computers due to the technological progress in
recent years. Nowadays, many different devices support the playback of videos. A major challenge is the
heterogeneity of mobile devices, especially the different devices classes (notebook, Handheld-PC, PDA,
or mobile phone) with many different features, e.g., the resolution of the display, the memory, the CPU,
and the software to decode and visualize the video. A significant reduction of the quality of the video is
typical if it is played backed on a mobile device. To avoid this problem, new technologies for the
adaptation of videos will be designed in the UserMedia project to facilitate the exchange of videos
between different devices.
The adaptation of videos is a complex research topic, which can be subdivided into logical and semantic
adaptation. An example of a logical adaptation is a change of the video codec in case of missing software
decoders or insufficient hardware support on mobile devices. The transcoding of videos should keep the
computational effort as low as possible and reuse data from complex calculations like motion vectors.
Although applications like Canopus ProCoder or VirtualDub enable the efficient transcoding of videos,
these tools do not consider the essential problem to preserve the semantic content. A better adaptation is
feasible if relevant semantic content is identified. An automatic adaptation algorithm should emphasise
this content. New processes will be developed in the UserMedia project for the adaptation of videos.
1.1.4.8
Commercial systems
There are a variety of commercial offerings in the areas we have discussed above. Obviously in the
professional content management space there are a large number of products and services. These generally
fall into two categories; CMS systems that are part of a larger integrated offering, eg: IBM’s Media Hub
Solution Framework which integrates with the DB2 framework, and SGI’s Atix Storage management
Solution. Alternatively a second category is the comprehensive product based solutions such as OmniBus
System’s OPUS, Antesia’s Digital Asset Management system and Virage’s VS production system. A
good example of state of the art is BlueOrder’s Media Archive which provides a comprehensive set of
facilities. These include full enterprise level content repository, workflow management, full search and
retrieval and integration with a variety of industry standard edit tools.
As discussed earlier, in the Web centric content management space there are a range of commercial
systems ranging from simple web site management tools such as SearchQuest to comprehensive systems
such as Joomla! and Mambo, both of which are open source offerings. Joomla! represents state of the art
in this space and offers a comprehensive, modular system that easily support extensions through the
notion of Bots. At the higher level, Joomla! has support for automatic site building, support for inventory
and eCommerce.
The area of web based personal content management has seen explosive growth over the last five years
with a large and growing number of commercial services. These range from specific photo management
sites for cell phones such as Orange’s ‘Orange Photos’ or more generic ones such as Flickr, up to the
personal spaces such as MySpace and YouTube. Increasingly the trend in these systems is to go beyond
basic storage and management and to provide a range of tools that work across various content types and
support manipulation, edit and composition.
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One approach to easing the complexity of management for end-users has been to open up access to
personal storage (usually PC based) via some form of remote access. A simple example of this is
Microsoft’s Web Folders whereby directories can be published and accessed across the network. There
have been several other companies who have attempted to resolve the personal content storage model in
this way, these include Orb with its PC based myOrb client and SoonR with its business centric content
management focus.
1.1.4.9
Experimental and Research Systems
The challenges of accessing data from mobile devices, browsing the Internet and supporting mobile
applications has been well studied over the past decade [15][29][12]. In general, mobile devices are
regarded as resource poor and are thus seen as clients or parts of larger network based systems: the client
disconnects (deliberately or unintentionally) and the challenge is to cache data so that operations proceed
until this data can be synchronized with the ‘master server copy’ when connectivity is restored. This
approach has been successfully demonstrated for a range of applications, including mobile file systems
(CODA [15]), business applications (WebSphere [12]) and in commercial synchronization tools [21][22].
More recently, tools such as ‘Unison’ have emerged that enable pair-wise synchronisation of files between
devices, bringing any two replicas into perfect synchronisation (and transitively, this method can be used
to converge a constellation of repositories into synchronisation). In both cases the challenge arises when
changes occur concurrently that cannot be reconciled without user intervention [29]. Automatic
reconciliation of data between loosely connected peers was explored in Bayou [36], where devices
periodically exchange operations in ‘anti-entropy’ sessions eventually converging on an agreed common
state. The notion of uncertainty was explicitly highlighted to the user by representing agreed and tentative
data visually. Bayou did not address the issues of representing where content is located across devices or
deal with actual content assets (e.g. potentially large media files) or the reconciliation of metadata
associated with such content.
The synchronisation problem has also been recognised in terms of the content of the data. ROMA [35]
ensured that the data on a constellation of devices was kept fresh by synchronising with a ROMA
metadata server. Latterly, commercial services such as Memeo AutoSync and FusionOne have offered
similar services (e.g. synchronisation of a shared address book to slave mobile devices). These services
again assume that a master repository exists as a synchronisation point against which to reconcile. This
does not support spontaneous interaction as commonly found with personal devices, e.g. as users wish to
exchange content in a peer-to-peer fashion, as in emerging pervasive computing scenarios. While
approaches such as ROMA address the problem of keeping information on multiple devices up to date
despite being partially connected, these approaches assume that a) devices are not sources of new content
that needs to be managed in their own right (e.g. pictures, audio recordings, etc.), and b) that users do not
wish to choose where to leave copies of their data (e.g. keeping images on a phone to show their friends).
There have however been a number of mobile peer-to-peer systems in both research terms and the
emerging commercial systems (note that we focus our discussion on supporting applications and services,
rather than in the primarily network issues of ad-hoc and delay tolerant networks, which have strong and
established associated communities). MARE for example, used a scenario of rescue services converging
on the scene of an accident to facilitate resource sharing and cooperation among rescuers [34]. Mobi-Dic
has taken this resource discovery problem further by considering how to make this process more efficient
in networks of transiently connecting mobile peers [38]. Proem offered middleware services to support
face to face interactions when devices were proximate, including file exchange applications and swapping
of human level activities [16]. Papadopoulos et al. take this further by exploring how to support ongoing
group awareness (e.g. for CSCW applications) in partially connected networks of devices [25].
Commercially, we are witnessing the emergence of mobile peer based social networking and
entertainment applications (e.g. peerboxmobile.com offers searching and download of files from peer-topeer networks from mobile systems and Google’s Dodgeball.com offers mobile community based
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gameplay). While this space of applications offers a number of insights into the technical mechanisms
needed for handling interactions when devices are brought together etc., the community have not yet
focused on shared content and content management in such groups. We believe that this raises an
important opportunity for UserMedia to conduct timely research in this area.
We argue that the locality of the data within such communities of devices is both significant and
intentional in user driven applications; however, there is insufficient support for issues such as
understanding ‘the big picture’, i.e. visualising the state of the user’s entire content repository, knowing
where data is kept within and across devices, and where it is within higher level user workflows (for
example, backed up, annotated, shared with friends, etc.).
1.1.5
Related IST projects
Work is also carried out in IST projects in areas related to UserMedia. The following list summarises the
most relevant once and comments on their relation to UserMedia.
•
•
•
•
•
AceMedia FP6 project (IP) in the content and semantics area. The main technological objectives
of AceMedia are to discover and exploit knowledge inherent in multimedia content in order to
make content more relevant to the user; to automate annotation at all levels; and to add
functionality to ease content creation, transmission, search, access, consumption and re-use. A key
element in realising these objectives in the aceMedia project is the creation of the concept of the
Autonomous Content Entity. An ACE comprises content, plus metadata and an intelligence layer
which can adopt autonomous actions on behalf of users. This project has some similar goals to
UserMedia however its takes a more complex approach requiring changes to many elements in the
value chain. In contrast, UserMedia accepts that a variety of media objects will exist and focuses
on tracking and managing these diverse components
CONTENT4ALL Cross Platform Tools for Community Content Publishing. The
CONTENT4ALL project focused on the use of a peer-to-peer approach to support an intelligent
cross media content management model. Utilizing an extended TVAnytime/IETF CRID content
reference model it was designed to allow professional and non professional media to be easily
shared, sorted and used. Focusing on travel information, the project demonstrated a number of
cross media content applications. Although focused more on managing collections of professional
and personal media, the CONTENT4ALL project has several innovations that could be leveraged
in UserMedia.
SEMEDIA - Search Environments for Media This project while only recently started (Jan 2007)
addresses one area that Usemedia focuses on, i.e. Content Search. SEMEDIA is designed primarily
to develop a collection of audiovisual search tools that are heavily user driven, preserve metadata
along the chain, and are generic enough to be applicable to different fields (broadcasting
production, cinema postproduction, and social web). This work, although in its early stages will be
tracked to feed into the search related subtasks in UserMedia.
X-MEDIA Large Scale Knowledge Sharing and Reuse across Media
X-Media addresses the issue of knowledge management in complex distributed environments. It
studies, develops and implements large scale methodologies and techniques for knowledge
management able to support sharing and reuse of knowledge that is distributed in different media
(images, documents and data) and repositories (data bases, knowledge bases, document
repositories, etc.). While X-MEDIA is more focused on knowledge management and hence less
applicable to personal media, we expect that some of the work within project, especially its
metadata management techniques will be relevant to Usermedia.
CONTENT Network Of Excellence. The overall goal of the CONTENT Network-of-Excellence
is to integrate the research efforts of the members to address the technical challenges at the
different system levels to enable easy-to-install and easy-to-use AV services in and between
homes. One key aim of the NoE is the development of tools for the curation of Multi-media assets
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•
•
1.1.6
which has relevance to UserMedia’s goals. Since several of the UserMedia partners are members
of CONTENT we expect good information flow and collaboration.
MIDAS Mobile Applications and Services Platform [FP6, IST STREP]: In MIDAS a platform
for mobile applications and services is being developed. The applications are rescue and
emergency and mobile sports events. An important part for the MIDAS middleware is the MIDAS
Data Space (MDS). MDS provides (relational structured) persistent storage and query facilities.
The MIDAS middleware platform (especially MDS) and the rescue and emergency application
requirements will be adapted and extended in UserMedia.
InterMedia: Interactive Media with Personal Networked Devices. This NoE project started in
October 2006 and will run for 4 years. Its focus is on the user as the focal point for multi-media
services and proposes wearable devices as the core technical approach. Within InterMedia the
Multimedia Content Adaptation and Sharing Research Group is perhaps most relevant to the
UserMedia project both in the area of adaptive video and in the areas of metadata management.
Beyond the state of the art: UserMedia innovation
UserMedia, with its flexible SOA and its inherent support for distributed, disconnected and pervasive
operation will provide a number of benefits that go beyond the state of the art. These are summarized in
the table below.
Research area
Content management
Current best practices UserMedia innovation
•
•
•
Workflow
Web based content
management
Web centric personal
content management
•
Distribution via
broker/manager
Content owned by
‘system’
Modular and open at
higher level,
however core tends
to be centralized and
monolithic
Only system internal
workflow in
connected stage
•
•
•
•
•
Limited support for
distribution
•
Limited support for
distribution
• Focus on
web sites
•
•
•
•
Limited metadata
Limited workflows
Focus on simple
content types
No distribution
•
•
•
•
•
Fully distributed and
pervasive content
management
Content owned by
user
Full modularity via
SOA
Workflow support
for pervasive,
distributed and some
times disconnected
use
Fully distributed
execution of
workflows.
Fully distributed
model
• Integration
with other
application
spaces
Workflow and
strong metadata
support
Fully distributed
Support for
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Distributed Databases
•
•
•
Video indexing
•
•
Video adaptation
Research area
•
Assume availability
of storage nodes
Hardwired
replication &
placement strategies
Complex models
and data structures
•
Focus on high
quality content
Centralized system
(usually high-end
server)
Video content and
user preferences are
not considered
•
•
•
•
•
•
distributed multi
devices
Support for
disconnected storage
Flexible replication
& placement
strategies
Adapted models for
distributed,
pervasive data
management
Indexing of amateur
videos and
professional videos
Indexing with
limited resources
Semantic adaptation
Considering user
preferences
Current best practices UserMedia innovation
Figure 5 : UserMedia Innovations
1.1.7
Patents and patent searching
We have carried out initial patent investigations, and there will be an ongoing patent-watch during the
three year Project duration to ensure that UserMedia R&D does not conflict with existing patented
technologies. We have identified the following patents which represent those patents most closely related
to the areas that UserMedia plans to innovate in:
•
US Pat. 6449627: Volume management method and system for a compilation of content : - Filed Jan 21, 2000 International Business Machines Corp.
•
WO2007042987: A Mobile Personalized Information Platform : Filed 2007-04-19 - Koninkl Philips Electronics Nv
(Nl); Philips Corp (US); (+3)
•
US Pat. 6959362 Caching based on access rights in connection with a content management server system or the like :
Filed May 7, 2003 - Microsoft Corporation
•
US Pat. 6424715: Digital content management system and apparatus
Filed Jun 3, 1997 - Mitsubishi Corporation
•
US Pat. 5852435: Digital multimedia editing and data management system : Filed Apr 12, 1996 - Avid Technology,
Inc.
•
US Pat. 6463444: Video cataloger system with extensibility
Filed Aug 14, 1998 - Virage, Inc.
•
US Pat. 6574609: Secure electronic content management system
Filed Sep 14, 1998 - International Business Machines Corporation
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•
1.1.7.1
US Pat. 6560639: System for web content management based on server-side application : Filed Feb 12, 1999 - 3565
Acquisition Corporation
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whitepaper.html
[23] OMA. (2007, May). [Online]. Available: http://www.openmobilealliance.org/
[24] Orange. (2007, May). [Online]. Available: http://photos.orange.co.uk/
[25] C. Papadopoulos, “Improving awareness in mobile cscw,” IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, vol. 05, no. 10,
pp. 1331–1346, 2006.
[26] F. Pereira and T. Ebrahimi, Eds., The MPEG-4 Book. Prentice Hall, 2002.
[27] E. Pitoura, S. Abiteboul, D. Pfoser, G. Samaras, and M. Vazirgiannis, “DBGlobe: a service-oriented P2P system for
global computing,” SIGMOD Rec., vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 77–82, 2003.
[28] D. Ratner, P. Reiher, and G. J. Popek, “Roam: A scalable replication system for mobility,” Mobile Networks and
Applications, vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 537–544, 2004.
[29] M. Satyanarayanan, B. Noble, P. Kumar, and M. Price, “Application-aware adaptation for mobile computing,”
SIGOPS Oper. Syst. Rev., vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 52–55, 1995.
[30] SearchQuest. (2007, May). [Online]. Available: http://www.searchquest.co.uk
[31] C. Skouteli, G. Samaras, and E. Pitoura, “Concept-based discovery of mobile services,” in MDM ’05: Proceedings of
the 6th international conference on Mobile data management. New York, NY, USA: ACM Press, 2005, pp. 257–261.
[32] SMPTE/Pro-MPEG Forum. Media eXchange Format (MXF), 7 Parts: File Formats, OPI, DV, GC, Format, GC D10,
Mapping, GC SDTI-CP Mapping, Version 10. [Online]. Available: http://www.g-fors.com/mxf.htm
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[33] Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. SMPTE metadata dictionary, RP210.2 (including RP210.1),
merged version, post rail publication of RP210.2. [Online]. Available:
http://www.smptera.or/mdd/RP210v2-1merged020507b.xsl
[34] M. Storey, G. Blair, and A. Friday, “MARE: resource discovery and configuration in adhoc networks,” Mob. Netw.
Appl., vol. 7, no. 5, pp. 377–387, 2002.
[35] E. Swierk, E. Kiciman, N. C. Williams, T. Fukushima, H. Yoshida, V. Laviano, and M. Baker, “The ROMA personal
metadata service,” Mob. Netw. Appl., vol. 7, no. 5, pp. 407–418, 2002.
[36] D. B. Terry, M. M. Theimer, K. Petersen, A. J. Demers, M. J. Spreitzer, and C. H. Hauser, “Managing update conflicts
in bayou, a weakly connected replicated storage system,” in SOSP ’95: Proceedings of the fifteenth ACM symposium
on Operating systems principles. New York, NY, USA: ACM Press, 1995, pp. 172–182.
[37] VirtualDub. (2007, May). [Online]. Available: http://www.virtualdub.org
[38] O. Wolfson, B. Xu, H. Yin, and H. Cao, “Search-and-discover in mobile p2p network databases,” in ICDCS ’06:
Proceedings of the 26th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems. Washington, DC, USA:
IEEE Computer Society, 2006, p. 65.
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1.3
1.1.8
Scientific and Technological methodology and associated work plan
Overall strategy of the work plan.
UserMedia is structured as four core technical workpackages, plus a Management package and
Technology Transfer and Dissemination package. The management package runs for the entire duration of
the project and is described in detail in section Section 2.1. Equally Technology Transfer and
Dissemination also runs for the full project time and is described in detail in section 3.
For the core S&T Workpackages, the project flows from WP2 which focuses on User Modelling and
Analysis. This WP forms the basis of the project in that it informs and directs the architecture (WP3), the
technology development (WP4) and the final trials (WP5)
To ensure that lessons learned are fed-back into the project, we have structured the user trials package
(WP5) as a two phase process. Once an initial architecture and platform have been developed we carry out
a short ‘mini-trial’ (T5.1/T5.2) to validate basic assumptions and technology. The results of this work are
fed back into WP3 and WP4 to update the architecture and technology components. Once this iteration is
complete a new version of the platform is integrated (T4.4) and delivered in WP5 for the main trials.
Finally we run two trials, one focused on a campus environment in the UK and the other on a wide area
real life consumer environment in Cyprus. These are based on the scenarios outlined in Section 1.1.1 and
are designed to ensure that we are able to validate the UserMedia architecture and technology platform in
as wide a variety of application settings as possible.
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1.1.9
Timing of the different WPs and their components
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1.1.10 Detailed UserMedia Work Description
1.1.10.1 Work package list
Work package list
Work
package
No2
Work package title
Type of
activity3
Lead
partic
no.4
Lead
partic.
short name
Personmonths5
Start
month6
End
month6
1
Management
MGT
1
Futu
23
1
36
2
User Modelling and Analysis
RTD
1
Futu
28
1
22
3
Architecture
RTD
4
UiO
93
3
36
4
Technology Development
RTD
2
ULanc
165
6
24
5
User Trials
RTD
2
ULanc
66
15
31
6
Technology Transfer &
Dissemination
RTD
6
Tand
47
1
36
TOTAL
2
3
4
5
6
445
Workpackage number: WP 1 – WP n.
Please indicate one activity per work package:
RTD = Research and technological development (including any activities to prepare for the dissemination and/or
exploitation of project results, and coordination activities); DEM = Demonstration; MGT = Management of the
consortium; OTHER = Other specific activities, if applicable in this call
Number of the participant leading the work in this work package.
The total number of person-months allocated to each work package.
Measured in months from the project start date (month 1).
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1.1.10.2 Deliverables list
List of Deliverables
Del. no. 7
Deliverable name
WP
no.
Nature8
Dissemi
-nation
level
Delivery date10
9
month)
(proj.
D1.1
Project Management and Quality Plan
WP1
(M1)
D1.2
Yearly Management Report
WP1
(M12)
(M24)
(M36)
D2.1
User Analysis Report
WP2
(M8)
D2.1.1 Personal Media Management Analysis
D2.1.2 User Preferences Analysis
D2.1.3 User Needs Modelling
D2.2
User Taxonomy Report
WP2
(M8)
D2.3
Final User Analysis Report
WP2
(M22)
D3.1
Initial UserMedia Architecture
WP3
(M10)
WP3
(M23)
D3.1.1 Initial architecture of distributed and
Pervasive Content Management
D3.1.2 Initial architecture of Video Indexing Tool
and Video Adaptation Service
D3.1.3 Initial architecture of Workflow Engine
D3.2
D3.1.4 Interface Description
Consolidated UserMedia Architecture
D3.2.1 Consolidated architecture of distributed
and Pervasive Content Management
D3.2.2 Consolidated architecture of Video
Indexing Tool and Video Adaptation Service
7
Deliverable numbers in order of delivery dates. Please use the numbering convention <WP number>.<number of
deliverable within that WP>. For example, deliverable 4.2 would be the second deliverable from work package 4.
8
Please indicate the nature of the deliverable using one of the following codes:
R = Report, P = Prototype, D = Demonstrator, O = Other
9
Please indicate the dissemination level using one of the following codes:
PU = Public
PP = Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission Services).
RE = Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the Commission Services).
CO = Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission Services).
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D3.2.3 Consolidated architecture of Workflow
Engine
D3.3
Final UserMedia Architecture
WP3
(M36)
D3.3.1 Final architecture of distributed and
Pervasive Content Management
D3.3.2 Final architecture of Video Indexing Tool
and Video Adaptation Service
D3.3.3 Final architecture of Workflow Engine
D4.1
Component design and interface specifications
WP4
(M12)
D4.2
Alpha release of components for testing and
integration
WP4
(M15)
D4.3
Beta release of components for acceptance testing
WP4
(M18)
D4.4
Stable release of integrated prototypes for user
trials
WP4
(M24)
D5.1
Initial Specification of User Trials – UserMedia
system
Results and analysis of First User Trial –
including tools and Video Adaptation
WP5
(M16)
WP5
(M18)
WP5
(M26)
D5.4
Final Specification of final User Trials –
UserMedia system
Results and analysis of final User Trials
WP5
(M31)
D6.1
Exploitation and Dissemination Plan
WP6
(M3) (M12)
(M24) (M36)
D6.2
UserMedia Project Website
(M2)
D6.3
UserMedia Information Brochures, publications,
Publicity DVD.
(Throughout
the project
duration)
D6.4
UserMedia Knowledge and Technology Transfer
Workshop Report
(M36)
D5.2
D5.3
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1.1.10.3 Description of the UserMedia Work Packages.
(Please note that the Work Package Leader is identified in Bold within the Participant Short
Name section, and the Task Leaders are identified in Bold within the Task Descriptions).
Work package
number
Work package title
Activity type11
Participant number
Participant short
name
Person-months per
participant
WP1
Start date or starting
event:
Start M1 : End M36
Management
MAN
1
Futu
ULanc
UMan
UiO
BO
Tand
Prime
23
0
0
0
0
0
0
Objectives
To manage the overall execution of the project in accordance with the defined and approved
Workplan, with deliverables on-time and within budget, to an agreed quality level, and to provide
timely and efficient project administration, technical and financial co-ordination, and liaison with
the European Commission and other relevant external bodies.
Description of work
(Task Leader shown in bold)
Task T1.1 Project Strategy (Futu: 2PM) [ Start M1 : End M36 ]
Project review: organisation of periodic Steering Board (SB) and Advisory Board (AB) meetings
for project progress review, decision-making and conflict resolution.
Inter-Project liaison: in the event that liaison activities with other projects are organised,
participation in meetings, contribution to common plans and actions (additional resources might be
needed if significant actions are agreed).
Task T1.2 Quality Control (Futu: 2PM) [ Start M1 : End M36 ]
Quality Plan creation: establishing and benchmarking the quality control process for all aspects of
the Project.
Quality Management: Overseeing the timely production of deliverables measured against the
quality plan, Workplan and contractual obligations.
Task T1.3 Technical Coordination (Futu: 11PM) [ Start M1 : End M36 ]
Technical Management: Workpackage and task co-ordination, workplan maintenance and followup, monitoring of project progress, identification and trouble shooting of technical or organisational
problems, technical co-ordination meetings, preparation of the project kick-off.
Reporting: Creation of periodic management reports for the European Commission, preparation of
project reviews and the Final Project Report.
Task T1.4 Financial and Administrative Co-ordination (Futu:8PM) [ Start M1 : End M36 ]
Financial administration: establishing and maintaining financial records. coordination of costs
11
RTD = Research and technological development (including any activities to prepare for the dissemination and/or exploitation of
project results, and coordination activities); DEM = Demonstration; MGT = Management of the consortium; OTHER = Other
specific activities, if applicable in this call.
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submission, cross-checks of individual costs against contractual commitments, progress reports,
delivery of approved results, and consolidation of cost, follow-up of European Commission
payments, distribution of partner shares.
Contract administration: maintenance of European Commission contract and Project Programme
with any agreed amendments.
Periodic Reporting: Preparation of Progress reports, gathering partner inputs and submission.
Document Management: Production of the required number of copies of deliverables and timely
submission to the European Commission, distribution of copies to the participants and archive of
Project material.
Deliverables
D1.1 Project Management and Quality Plan (M1)
D1.2 Yearly Management report (M12, M24, M36)
(Plus any additional administrative reports as requested by the European Commission)
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Work package
number
Work package title
Activity type12
Participant number
Participant short
name
Person-months per
participant
WP2
event:
User Modelling and Analysis
RTD
Start M1 : End M22
Futu
ULanc
UMan
UiO
BO
Tand
Prime
13
4
7
0
0
4
0
Objectives
This work package, led by an industrial partner but with participation from several others will focus
on better understanding of current user practices, mental models and needs in the area of personal
media management. It will develop a taxonomy of users, ranging from light usage users who mainly
store and use professional content through to heavy users who create their own content and actively
‘mash-up’ and share digital media. It will then conduct focus studies, literature search, user
questionnaires and observational probes to develop a better understanding of user needs, models and
approach. This work will inform the rest of the UserMedia project
Description of work
Task T2.1 Personal Media Management Analysis (UMan: 4PM , FUTU:4PM, ULANC: 2PM,
Tand : 2PM ) [ Start M1 : End M22 ]
To conduct an in-depth analysis of personal media management practises from the perspective of
user behaviour, user needs and mental models. In particular, the analysis will elucidate the way in
which users would like to organize their digital media devices, such as the PC, media players and
video game boxes, and their content. This includes analysis of the most popular processing tools,
e.g., video editing software.
Task T2.2 User Taxonomy (UMan: 1PM ,FUTU: 2PM, ULANC: 1PM) [ Start M2 : End M6 ]
Using the output from the analysis in T2.1, This subtask will create a taxonomy of users in the
personal media creation and management space, with which to further analyse user behaviour.
Task T2.3 User Preferences Analysis (UMan: 1PM, ULANC: 1PM) [ Start M4 : End M7 ]
Based on the User Taxonomy created in T2.2, a series of focus studies, questionnaires and
observational probes will be executed to derive an objective assessment of user needs.
Observational techniques will be chosen to be as minimally invasive as possible to elicit true user
behaviour.
Task T2.4 User Needs Modelling (Futu: 7PM ,UMan: 1PM, Tand: 2PM) [ Start M5 : End M9 ]
Taking the results of T2.3 as input, this subtask will provide a model for user needs that can be used
by the UserMedia project in support of the definition of the architecture and tools. In particular this
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Task will focus on three areas and will create three main outputs:
1) User preferences for Indexing, which identifies typical user queries in the context of
Universities (e.g., find all teachware videos on a specific topic and download them to a
portable device). The insight of this analysis will define the requirements for the automatic
indexing of videos. This will provide input for WP 3.1.2 (Architecture for the Video
Indexing Tools).
2) User preferences for the video adaptation. For this purpose, test users will watch manually
created adapted videos on different mobile devices and comment them. User preferences for
the adaptation of videos will be derived from the comments of the users. The results will be
aggregated into the sub-task report.
3) User Needs Model that defines the aggregated findings, based on the User Taxonomy, of the
needs of users, defining ideal features and functionality required. This Model will be used as
the basis for defining the UserMedia architecture as a whole, and will provide input for WP
3.1 (Overall Architecture of the UserMedia System).
Deliverables (brief description) and month of delivery
D2.1 User Analysis Report (M8)
•
D2.1.1 Personal Media Management Analysis
•
D2.1.2 User Preferences Analysis
•
D2.1.3 User Needs Modelling
D2.2 User Taxonomy Report (M8)
D2.3 Final User Analysis Report (M22)
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Work package
number
Work package title
Activity type13
Participant number
Participant short
name
Person-months per
participant
WP3
event:
Start M3 : End M36
Architecture
RTD
1
2
Futu
ULanc
3
UMan
4
UiO
5
BO
6
Tand
7
Prime
12
14
19
19
4
4
20
Objectives
The UserMedia system will be based on an overall architecture comprising a number of functionally
separated but interconnected building blocks. The overall objective of his workpackage is to design
a framework in which the different parts are placed into their architectural context. This includes:
•
To design a component based architecture in which the different building blocks form a
coherent and usable whole.
•
To design the architecture of the distributed and pervasive content management system in
such a way that its major parts can be ported between the different devices
•
To design a number of example services (i.e. video indexing and adaptation tools) to assist
the content search and management process
•
To design a workflow engine to optimally support the different management steps as well as
the user interaction.
•
To specify the interfaces between the different building blocks
The work will take account of practical requirements identified in the user modelling tasks (in
WP 2) and the user trials applications developed in the project (WP5). Therefore it is split into three
parts with an initially architecture being developed by month 6, a consolidated architecture being
prepared after additional input has been received from WP2 and WP4 (month 23), and the final
architecture taking into account WP5 feedback delivered in month 36.
Description of work
Task T3.1: Overall architecture of the UserMedia system (Ulanc : 20PM,UiO: 19PM, UMan:
14PM, Futu: 12PM, BO:19PM, Tand: 4PM, Prime:4PM) [ Start M3 : End M36 ]
The main purpose of this task is to specify the overall architecture of the UserMedia System and its
building blocks. The architecture will impose functional requirements on each of the building
blocks (those explicitly listed in WP 4, and others that might be identified in the course of WP 3). It
will develop an overall approach to user centric media management and is likely to rely on a
lightweight service oriented architecture (SOA) approach that makes use of techniques used by the
professional digital content industry. However, key issues such as highly distributed and
disconnected operations, flexible and co-operative workflows and highly interactive content will
server to radically alter the overall architecture from existing ‘traditional’ content management
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systems (CMS). It is broken down into a number of sub-tasks representing the core functional tasks
and components of the architecture. The architecture will also contain a full description of the
interfaces between the different building blocks. The overall architecture will also contain interfaces
for user applications. The interfaces will be specified early on in the workpackage to ensure
openness in independence in the development of the different building blocks. The workpackage
will be broken up into three phases where the second phase will take into account feedback from
WP 2, WP 4 and WP 5.
Sub-Task 3.1.1: Architecture of the distributed and pervasive content management system
(ULanc : 13PM, UiO:15PM, BO: 7PM, Futu:7PM, Tand: 5PM ) [ Start M3 : End M36 ]
The main purpose of this task is to design the core management architecture of a distributed
pervasive content management system that is capable to span various classes of devices. As such it
place special attention on the interactions and interfaces between the storage components and the
management of metadata. This includes all decisions concerning the allocation of storage and the
active and passive replication of content. The management components have run independently and
autonomously on different devices. Thus, the goal is to design a system architecture where major
parts of the system are device independent and can be easily ported from PCs and laptops to small
devices, like PDAs.
In order to determine the proper interfaces among the components, this task will analyze existing
systems in the area of content management systems, mobile databases and tuple spaces, and identify
their shortcomings with respect to the UserMedia goals. By factorizing the necessary tasks of a
content management system for UserMedia, we aim to achieve a clean separation of concerns
within the system. Generated metadata and new media (in the case of video adaptation) will be
exchanged with the core architecture components developed in 3.1.1 through the interfaces defined
in 3.1.4.
Sub-Task 3.1.2: Architecture of the Video Indexing Tools and Video Adaptation Service
(UMan : 10PM, Futu: 3PM) [ Start M3 : End M36 ]
This sub-task is concerned with designing architectural concepts of relevant content services. More
specifically these are Video Indexing Tools and Video Adaptation Services. The sub-task is
concerned with the functional aspects of these services as well as their integration into the overall
architecture.
Sub-Task 3.1.3: Architecture of Workflow Engine (BO:7PM) [ Start M3 : End M36 ]
This sub-task is concerned with the design of the workflow engine to support specific management
tasks and user interaction. Within the context or UserMedia a specific challenge is how to deal with
interrupted workflows in a disconnected environment.
Sub-Task 3.1.4: Interface Specification (ULanc : 4PM , UMan: 2PM, UiO:4PM, BO:XPM,
Prime: 4PM, Tand 5PM, Futu: 2PM) [ Start M3 : End M36 ]
This sub-task deals with the definition of the component interfaces that are provided to other
UserMedia building blocks as well as to outside components.
Deliverable 3.1: Initial UserMedia Architecture (M10)
This deliverable provides the initial overall architecture and subsumes all sub-tasks.
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•
D3.1.1 Initial architecture of distributed and Pervasive Content Management
•
D3.1.2 Initial architecture of Video Indexing Tool and Video Adaptation Service
•
D3.1.3 Initial architecture of Workflow Engine
•
Deliverable 3.2: Consolidated UserMedia Architecture (M23)
This deliverable provides the consolidated overall architecture taking into account feedback from
WP2 and WP4.
•
D3.2.1 Final architecture of distributed and Pervasive Content Management
•
D3.2.2 Final architecture of Video Indexing Tool and Video Adaptation Service
•
•
D3.2.4 Interface Description (update)
Deliverable 3.3: Consolidated UserMedia Architecture (M36)
This deliverable provides the final overall architecture and subsumes all final sub-tasks taking into
account feedback WP5.
•
D3.3.1 Final architecture of distributed and Pervasive Content Management
•
D3.3.2 Final architecture of Video Indexing Tool and Video Adaptation Service
•
•
D3.3.4 Interface Description (update)
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Work package
number
Work package title
Activity type14
Participant number
Participant short
name
Person-months per
participant
WP4
event:
Technology Development
Start M6 : End M24
Futu
ULanc
UMan
UiO
BO
Tand
Prime
16
43
32
60
4
4
6
Objectives
In contrast with established CMS, pervasive content management systems are driven from user
needs to assemble and work spontaneously with confederations of personal and embedded devices,
contemporary operating systems and Internet based (online) services. The key focus of this
workpackage is how to map the design from WP3 into efficient prototypes suitable for supporting
spontaneous and periodic associations of media repositories as users enact workflows combining
personal devices with networked applications and services. This is an inherently interactive process
leading to stringent requirements for low latency, high performance discovery and synchronisation
of metadata and first class support for disconnected and connected operation modes.
The overall objective of this workpackage is to refine the design and implement the technical
subsystems according to the design requirements established in WP3, necessary to build deployable
prototypes of next generation pervasive content management systems.
We will focus on refining the design and iterative prototyping of the following subsystems:
•
Distributed metadata management
•
Media indexing
•
Automated content adaptation
Reusable components will be developed and integrated to form platform prototypes suitable for
deployment on the target devices used to evaluate the system (in WP5).
Description of work
Task 4.1: Design and implementation of Distributed Content Discovery, Management and
Metadata Management components (UiO : 50PM ULanc: 21PM , Futu: 8PM) [ Start M6 : End
M17 ]
This task will develop the distributed and pervasive content management system based on the
architecture in Task 3.1.1. One important part of this work is the detailed design of the systems
components, i.e. storage, metadata management and allocation and replication Management. The
task will develop new algorithms for metadata discovery, metadata distribution, content discovery
and autonomic content. During implementation, the task will take into consideration planned trials
and performance and define appropriate metrics.
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Task 4.2: Design and implementation of Media Indexing, Content Summary and Visualisation
components (UMan : 32PM, Futu: 8PM)) [ Start M12 : End M15 ]
This task will develop components for indexing and the adaptation of videos as well as for
multimedia vizualization. Of critical importance is the interaction between these components as
well as communication with the other components of the UserMedia system. A first prototype with
a limited functionality will be made available early to test the communication between the
components and the UserMedia system. User feedback is used continuously to improve the quality
of the components during the project.
Task 4.3: Design and implementation of Workflow Engine and Content Services (BO : 4PM,
ULanc: 4PM) [ Start M15 : End M18 ]
This task will develop the workflow engine based on the architecture developed in sub-task 3.1.3.
The workflow engine will be developed as a service according to a SOA model. Within this task the
algorithms for workflow management in distributed and pervasive environments will be developed.
These will address issues related to the (temporal) unavailability of resources, distribution and
mobility aspects. As a distributed service the workflow engine co-ordinates with other workflow
engines to achieve the execution of tasks on remote devices. It also interfaces to the distributed and
pervasive management components and the video indexing and video adaptation services.
Task 4.4: User trial Integrated Prototype Development (ULanc : 18PM: UiO 10PM, Prime:
6PM, TAND 4PM) [ Start M12 : End M24 ]
This task covers the Platform Integration, including design and implementation of the integrated
trial prototype. This part of the workpackage serves two key functions. Firstly, it serves as a
unifying function; integrating the above components to form a single platform (including the
professional video conferencing equipment from Tandberg). Secondly, this work will help ensure
that the platform meets the needs of the two user trials. We would expect to construct a number of
small-scale prototypes to test various aspects of the platform on a range of target devices. When the
platform is stable, this activity will construct and release the user trial prototypes (D4.4).
D4.1 Component design and interface specifications (M12)
D4.2 Alpha release of components for testing and integration (M15)
D4.3 Beta release of components for acceptance testing (M18)
D4.4 Stable release of integrated prototypes for user trials (M24)
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Work package
number
Work package title
Activity type15
Participant number
Participant short
name
Person-months per
participant
WP5
event:
Start M15 : End M31
User Trials
RTD
1
2
Futu
ULanc
3
UMan
4
UiO
5
BO
6
Tand
7
Prime
0
18
0
0
0
24
24
Objectives
The main objective of the user trial work package is to validate the user modelling and technology
development through a series of longitudinal trials with end users. To ensure adequate feedback the
user trial tasks have been structured with an initial ‘mini-trial’ which feeds back into the user
modelling tasks in WP 2 and the architecture tasks in WP3.
•
Ensure that architecture and technology support user models as analysed in WP2
•
Ensure performance and usability of core distribution content management model
•
Validate workflow support
Description of work
The workpackage will focus on two large scale user trials aimed at meeting the objectives discussed
above.
Trial 1, carried out at Lancaster University in the UK will focus on content management in a
campus environment. Using the public display and WiFi communications infrastructure on campus
trial 1 will explore media management in a semi public environment. Of particular interest will be
the intersection between purely personal content management and management where content is
shared and often used in a public display space. Mannheim will participate in Trial 1 for media
analysis and indexing and will carry out a parallel trial to investigate video tools.
Trial 2, carried out by PrimeTel in Cyprus will focus on media management in a cellular network
environment. Here the focus will be on management of content as it moves between users personal
devices. Primetel will provide an overlay of broadcast network capable of enabling the deployment
of the UserMedia personal media management system via mobile phones, PDA’s, digital cameras
etc. The user trials will engage actual customers/users in order to gain insight of the acceptance and
the usability of the system and to understand user needs while validating the technology.
Task T5.1 Trial 1 specification (ULanc : 6PM, UMan : 5PM) [ Start M15 : End M26 ]
The task will design the overall trial 1 based on the analysis in WP2. It will run as two separate
phases. Phase 1 will be designed to specify the initial ‘mini-trial’ and phase 2 will build on lessons
learned in the ‘mini-trial’ to specify the main trial.
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Task T5.2 Trial 1. Campus environment, (ULanc:15PM) [ Start M16 : End M31 ]
The campus trial will run as a short two (2) month mini-trial and a full six (6) months trial. The
Trial application will follow the Group Work scenario described in section 1.1.1 and will involve
users creating media using personal devices and sharing that media via a campus wide content
management and display infrastructure. The initial mini-trial will be used to feed results back into
WP2, WP3 and WP4
Sub-Task T5.2.1 Media Analysis, indexing and video adaptation (UMan : 13PM) [ Start M17 :
End M30 ]
As part of the main Campus Trial we will carry out a specific trail of the analysis and indexing tools
(Deliverable M5.1) and the video adaptation (Deliverable 5.2) Of particular interest is the
acceptance of the quality of the analysis tools and the indexing tools by real users. For the video
adaptation we will explore delivery to a range of mobile devices. Apart from core technology this
task will design Web questionnaires, get feedback from the users and then improve the video
analysis and adaptation tools according to the users’ comments.
Task T5.3 Trial 2: Wide area trial specification: (PrimeTel : 10PM) [ Start M24 : End M26 ]
This task will define the key characteristics of the wide area trial including, scope and duration. This
task will take into consideration the results of the ‘mini-trial’ in T5.2 as well as the results of WP2
and WP3. The wide area trial specification aims to define the necessary infrastructure, the overlay
network and all the relevant parameters, which are closely related with the conduction of the main
user trial..
Task T5.4 Trial 2 (PrimeTel : 14PM, ULanc : 3PM) [ Start M26 : End M31 ]
The full wide area trial will run for six months and be carried out by PrimeTel in Cyprus, using
Primetel’s current customers. It will run in parallel with Trial 1 and will have designated interaction
points where both trial managers will share status to ensure cross fertilization. The Trial customers
will be able to utilize the proposed media management system using multimedia capable devices
creating, consuming, sharing, editing, storing and managing digital content. In order for customers
needs and suggestions to be addressed, a special web questionnaire will be developed to gather
feedback from the end-users for further processing. The ultimate goal will be to validate the
UserMedia system while obtaining a good understanding of specific consumer segments. This will
lead to the development of profitable business models for lifestyle services.
Milestones/ Deliverables
D5.1 Specification of First User Trials – UserMedia system (M16)
D5.2 Results and analysis of First User Trials Adaptation (M18)
D5.3 Specification of Final User Trials – UserMedia system (M26)
D5.4 Results and analysis of Final User Trials (M31)
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Work package
number
Work package title
Participant number
Participant short
name
Person-months per
participant
WP6
event:
Exploitation and Dissemination
RTD
Start M1 : End M36
Futu
ULanc
UMan
UiO
Blue
Tand
Prime
6
3
5
5
1
12
16
Objectives
To produce a Project Exploitation Plan, and a Project Dissemination Plan.
To create awareness of the UserMedia project and project outcomes, and to disseminate information
to Industry, SMEs, standards bodies and the public and to facilitate exchanges with these external
groups.
To actively exploit the project outcomes both internally within the partner organisations and
through suitable external routes.
Description of work
WP6 will be led by an industrial partner with primary focus on exploiting the project results in a
commercial setting. A sub work-package, led by an academic partner will focus on dissemination
through workshops and publications of the academic results from the project.
T6.1 Technology Transfer & Exploitation and Dissemination (Tand: 12PM, Futu: 6PM,
Ulanc: 3PM, Uman: 15PM, UiO:5PM, BO: 1PM, Prime: 16PM) [ Start M1 : End M36 ]
At project start, a detailed Technology Transfer, Exploitation and Dissemination Plan will be
prepared. It will define the targets, the activities carried out, along with timing and implementation
details. The plan will also define the industry conferences, exhibitions and other suitable events that
should be targeted by the Project in order to ensure as wide a take-up as possible of the UserMedia
research. This Plan will be created by the Exploitation Committee, and will be updated annually.
Particular attention will be paid to the role of standards in the project and the input that the project
will have within these standards bodies.
UserMedia Technology Transfer / Exploitation
These activities will include:
• Partners’ internal and external exploitation of outcomes
• Contributions to Standards Bodies
• Management of Intellectual Property
UserMedia information dissemination
These activities will cover
• Events and publications
• Co-operation with External Bodies / Organisations
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•
•
•
•
•
•
Leaflets, poster and promotional DVD
UserMedia web portal
Participation in international conferences/workshops
Publication of papers
UserMedia Knowledge and Technology Transfer Workshop
Other innovation- related Activities relating to UserMedia
This task will also cover collaboration with organisations and groups who are sensitive to the
research issues addressed by UserMedia
Deliverables
D6.1 Exploitation and Dissemination Plan (M3) (M12) (M24) (M36)
D6.2 UserMedia Project Website (M2)
D6.3 UserMedia Information Brochures, publications, DVD (Throughout the project duration)
D6.4 UserMedia Knowledge and Technology Transfer Workshop Report (M36)
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1.1.10.4 Summary effort table
The following table summarises the UserMedia Person-month effort per partner and per
WorkPackage.
Partic.
no.
Partic.
short
name
WP1
WP2
WP3
WP4
WP5
WP6
Total
person
months
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Total
Futu
Lanc
UMan
UiO
BO
Tand
Prime
23PM
0
0
0
0
0
0
23PM
13PM
4PM
7PM
0
0
4PM
0
28PM
12PM
20PM
14PM
19PM
19PM
4PM
4PM
93PM
16PM
43PM
32PM
60PM
4PM
4PM
6PM
165PM
0
24PM
18PM
0
0
0
24PM
66PM
6PM
3PM
5PM
5PM
1PM
12PM
16PM
47PM
70PM
94PM
76PM
84PM
24PM
24PM
50PM
445PM
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1.1.10.5 List of milestones
Milestones are control points where decisions are needed with regard to the next stage of the project. For
example, a milestone may occur when a major result has been achieved, if its successful attainment is a
required for the next phase of work. Another example would be a point when the consortium must decide
which of several technologies to adopt for further development.
Milestone
number
Milestone name
1
UserMedia Architecture (First
Version)
Initial UserMedia Platform
Integration
Completion of initial Campus
Trial
UserMedia Architecture
(Consolidated Version)
Final UserMedia Platform
Integration
Results and analysis of final
User Trials
Finale UserMedia Architecture
2
3
4
5
6
7
16
Work
package(s)
involved
WP3
Expected
date 16
Means of
verification17
M10
Deliverable D3.1
WP4
M12
Deliverable D4.1
WP5
M18
Deliverable D5.2
WP3
M23
Deliverable D3.2
WP4
M24
Deliverable D4.4
WP5
M31
Deliverable D5.4
WP3
M36
Deliverable D3.3
Show how both the participants and the Commission can check that the milestone has been attained. Refer to indicators if
appropriate.
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Exploitation
Management
1.1.11 Graphical presentation of the UserMedia components showing their interdependencies
T2.1
Personal media
Management analysis
T2.2
User Taxonomy
T2.3
User preference
analysis
T3.1.1
Distributed and pervasive
content management
T3.1.2
Video indexing and
adaptation
T3.1.3
Workflow engine
T4.1
Content discovery,
management and
Meta-data components
T4.2
Media indexing,
discovery and
vizualization
T2.4
User needs Modelling
T3.1.4
Interface specification
T4.3
Workflow engine
and content services
T4.4
Platform integration
Trial 1
Campus
Phase 1 (mini-trial)
T 5.1 Specification
T5.2 Trial
Phase 2 (full trial)
T 5.1 Specification
T5.2 Trial
Trial 2
Wide Area
T 5.3 Specification
T5.4 Trial
T 5.2.2
Video adaptation trial
(Stand-alone)
Figure 6 : UserMedia Work Packages and their inter-relation.
1.1.12 Risk Management
UserMedia will take every step required to ensure that risks are minimised from the start of the project,
and any identified risks arising during the project duration will be mitigated by the execution of a rigorous
Risk Management process.
1.1.12.1 Project Management Tool
Anything that "will have an adverse impact" on the project is considered a Risk. UserMedia will minimise
risks at all levels and in all areas of the project. The Project will use OPMCreator, a web-based project
management tool, for managing all major aspects of the management and technical progress of the project.
OPMCreator will provide UserMedia with a wide range of tools and features, including:
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Creating and manage tasks
Assigning tasks to users
Track actual effort against estimated
Tracking task progress
Personal “Mytasks” area for rapid
access
Share ideas with UserMedia project
users
Conduct online discussions
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Solve problems
Encourage project feedback
Project news manager
Archive of project documents and
data
Links management
Fully functional administration area
Risk Management Plan
1.1.12.2 General Risk Management
The UserMedia management team will conduct a continual risk assessment, monitoring and
minimisation process throughout the duration of the Project. The four key steps to this process
are Risk Identification, Risks Quantification, Risk Response and Risk Monitoring and Control.
These are expanded below:
Risk Identification : At this stage, UserMedia management will identify and name the risks.
This will happen at project start during the first Technical Committee meeting. This will involve
reviewing the existing identified project risks (particularly the technical risks listed below) and a
combination of brainstorming and reviewing of standard risk lists.
Commercial and business risks are ongoing risks that will be addressed by both the Steering
Committee and the Exploitation Committee. A continual watch on current State of the Art and
potential threats from external research and commercial developments will be undertaken, and
any remedial action will be planned into the UserMedia project.
Generic risks are defined in two parts. The first is the cause of the situation (Partner not meeting
deadline, User Trial users not available, etc.). The second part is the impact (Budget might be
exceeded, Milestones not achieved, etc.)..
Risk Quantification: Risks will be quantified in two dimensions. The impact of the risk will be
assessed, and the probability of the risk occurring will be assessed. Each will be rated on a 1 to 4
scale. The larger the number, the larger the impact or probability. By using a matrix, a priority
can be established.
If probability is high, and impact is low, it is a Medium risk. On the other hand if impact is high,
and probability low, it is High priority.
Risk Response : There are four things UserMedia will do about a risk. The strategies are:
•
•
•
•
Avoid the risk / do something to remove it. Use another component technology, for
example.
Transfer the risk: for example moving a Task or Subtask to another partner who is more
able to guarantee its completion on time and within budget.
Mitigate the risk. Take actions to lessen the impact or chance of the risk occurring. If the
risk relates to availability of resources, an agreement will be made to move resources
within the UserMedia project.
Accept the risk. The risk might be so small the effort to do anything is not worth while.
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The UserMedia risk response plan will include the strategy and action items to address the
strategy. The actions should include what needs to be done, who is doing it, and when it should
be completed.
Project Management Software Risk Control : There will be a continual monitoring of risks to
identify any change in the status, or if they turn into an issue. Regular risk reviews will be held
as part of the Steering Committee, Technical Committee and Dissemination Committee agendas,
and will identify actions outstanding, risk probability and impact, remove risks that have passed,
and identify new risks.
1.1.12.3 Technological Risks
The technology risks within UserMedia are related on the one hand to the basic technologies and
technological concepts used within UserMedia and on the other hand to potential parallel
developments that might make (parts of) the developed system obsolete. UserMedia makes use
of the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) concept since it provides a flexible framework to
integrate different services in an open distributed environment. This appears particularly suitable
for heterogeneous environments as encountered in UserMedia. At present the SOA paradigm is
mostly realised using Web Services. The Web Service Definition Language (WSDL), Simple
Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and UDDI (Universal Description, Discovers and Integration)
form the core of the Web Services standard suite. BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution
Language for Web Services) has been devised to model (complex) business processes that are
executed by Web Services. However, there is a lack of QoS support in Web Services as well as
the concept of state is missing. Further, their applicability in a pervasive environment has not yet
be proven. Though this risk is considered minimal since initial investigations of the partners in
this area show that the main functionality can be realised and necessary extensions can be
implemented alongside the core.
Another technical risk is related to to distributed databases. "Conventional" distributed databases
have been around for some time. However, solutions in distributed and pervasive systems are so
far still a research topic (which will be addressed in the project). There is always a risk regarding
performance of such systems on mobile devices. However, a solution based on less sophisticated
file based information systems can be used as contingency in this context.
A further technical risk is related to the video indexing and video adaptation tasks. The proposed
work here will result in a sophisticated system providing optimal support within a distributed and
pervasive environment. The development in this area has to show that a lightweight solutions
that can be implemented on different devices are feasible. If this is not achievable, the
contingency plan is to provide support on the more powerful devices (e.g. PC) and use them as
hosts for certain services.
With respect to alternative technical solutions it can be envisaged that purely Web based
systems might offer parts of the functionality provided by a UserMedia system. However, they
will not be able to offer support in a distributed and pervasive environment and also will not
have capabilities that allow to access the user's own content from any device in an adapted
manner.
1.1.12.4 Technology Cross – Coverage
Although the consortium partners are mutually complimentary there exists a degree of crosscoverage which could be exploited if difficulties arise. In particular, ULANC and UiO have
some degree of overlap and a high degree of understanding of each others expertise. UiO and
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UMAN also have skills in similar areas and could, if forced, cover some of the responsibilities.
BO, Tand and Prime have little overlap although ULANC could cover aspects of BO's work.
With respect to the System Architecture workpackage WP3, the workpackage leader UiO and
the other main group, ULanc would be able to carry on the workpackage in the absence of the
other. For the technology development (WP4) the overall platform development could continue
in the absence of one of the main partners although it is likely that the video indexing and
visualization would need to be scaled back in the absence of UMAN. Workflow and content
work by BO could be covered to some extent by ULANC but would not be integrated into a
commercial offering. In WP5 User Trials, it would be possible to run a scaled back campus trial
at either UMAN or UiO. However it is unlikely that the absence of Primetel could be covered
and the Cyprus based trial would have to be canceled.
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2 Implementation
2.1
Management structure and procedures
The UserMedia Project is based on a management structure coping with the inherent complexity
of a collaborative research project in an international context.
The organization of the project management covers various aspects: strategic, technical and
logistical issues. In order to address these fully, a particular management structure has been
chosen for the Project.
2.1.1
Organisational Structure
The UserMedia Project has three decision making bodies:
The Steering Committee (SC), which coordinates and manage all elements which affect
the Project’s strategic orientation, contractual terms and overall non-technical
management of the project, and comprises one Management Representative from each
Project partner, the Project Manager and the Project Administrator.
The Technical Committee (TC), which is responsible for the management of all
technical aspects of the Project, is composed of all of the Workpackage leaders, the
Project Manager and the Project Administrator.
The Exploitation Committee (EC), which is responsible for the management of all
matters relating to Project Exploitation and Dissemination, and is composed of all of a
representative from each of the Partners, the Project Manager and the Project
Administrator.
The UserMedia Project has one consultative body, the Advisory Board.
The Advisory Board (AB) provides the expertise and judgement of senior figures from
the digital media related industries, invited to be members of the Board. The Advisory
Board will meet at six monthly intervals, and will be joined by members of the Steering
Committee, who will report on project status and strategy, discuss with the Advisory
Board members, and act upon collective advice received as necessary.
Members of the board include senior representatives from the BBC, Deutsche Welle,
Panasonic, SonyEricsson and Motorola.
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The UserMedia management team comprises:
•
•
•
•
•
A Project Manager
A Technical Manager
A Exploitation Manager.
A Project Administrator
Workpackage Leaders
•
•
•
•
Steering Committee
Technical Committee
Exploitation Committee
Advisory Board
Steering Committee
Advisory Board
Exploitation Manager
Exploitation Committee
Project Manager
Project Office
Project Administrator
Admin Assistant
Technical Manager
Technical Committee
WP1 Leader
WP2 Leader
WP n Leader
WP2 Team
WP2 Team
WP n Team
Figure 7 : UserMedia Project Management Structure & Communication lines.
In order to co-ordinate the work among the Partners, the Steering Committee and the Technical
Committee are responsible for running the project.
The members of the SC and TC, and the main posts of The Project Manager, Exploitation
Manager, Technical Manager, Project Administrator and Work package Leaders will be
confirmed during the project kick-off Meeting.
2.1.2
Individual Responsibilities
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The UserMedia management team have various specific responsibilities. These are as follows:
2.1.2.1
Steering and Technical Committee Members
The representative of each partner sitting on the Steering Committee is authorised to make
decisions on behalf of that Partner company in terms of overall strategy and resources allocated
to the project.
The representative of each partner sitting on the Technical Committee is authorised to make
decisions on the technical aspects of the project.
2.1.2.2
Project Manager
The Project Manager is responsible for the following:
• Providing liaison with the European Commission
• Acting as Project spokesperson, externally.
• Chair of the Steering Committee.
• Proposing the strategic orientation of the project
• Implementing the decisions taken by the Steering Committee
• Risk identification, reporting and management of all aspects of the Project in partnership
with the Technical Manager and Dissemination Manager.
2.1.2.3
Technical Manager
The Project Manager has the following responsibilities:
•
•
•
•
•
•
2.1.2.4
Chair of the Technical Committee
Coordination of the Project’s technical activities
Ensuring the consistency and quality of technical and scientific deliverables.
Ensuring technical milestones are met within the Project schedule.
Providing technical monitoring and feedback to the Project Manager and Steering
Committee, through the Workpackage leaders.
Risk identification, reporting and management of all technical aspects in consultation
with Workpackage leaders.
Project Administrator
The Project Administrator has the following responsibilities:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Administrative management of the project (all non-technical/ non-Strategic aspects).
Preparation of periodic Project reports (Managing the input of information and collating
progress and other reports)
Managing the cost statement process and preparing consolidated Project cost statements
Creating the Final Project Report (D1.n)
Project Management and Quality plan (D1.1)
Financial administration and audit certificates
Non-technical review of Deliverables (editing, consistency checking, QA).
Project Review facilitation
Project Risk report generation
Creation of the Consortium Agreement
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2.1.2.5
Administrative Assistant
The Project Administrative Assistant has the following responsibilities:
•
•
•
•
2.1.2.6
Provides support in administration tasks and in the meetings logistics
Project Website maintenance and update.
Deliverables editing and Deliverables production support
Project archive maintenance (all documents, contracts, cost statement, reports etc)
Workpackage Leader
The Workpackage Manager leads the Workpackage Team, and has the following
responsibilities:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
2.1.2.7
Co-ordinating the different tasks and activities of the Workpackage
Facilitating effective communication between the participants.
Identifying risks and reporting on risk potential to the Technical Manager, and executing
risk mitigation actions.
Ensuring that the WP is executed according to the Annex 1, “Description of Work”.
Reporting to the Technical Manager every three months on technical progress of the
workpackage.
Ensuring timely submission of Workpackage deliverables
Coordinating interaction and collaboration with other Workpackages
Chairing Workpackage-specific technical meetings
Workpackage-specific technical dissemination.
Convening WP meetings (as and when necessary, no less than every 3 months).
Exploitation Manager
The Exploitation Manager Chairs the Exploitation Committee, and has the following
responsibilities:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
2.1.3
Co-ordinating all aspects of Project Exploitaiton and Dissemination
Lisising with the Exploitation representatives from each Partner organisation.
Co-ordinating the production of an overall Project Exploitation and Dissemination plan.
Planning Dissemination activities in partnership with the Workpackage leaders, Project
Manager and Technical Manager.
Chairing Exploitation and Dissemination meetings
Providing Exploitation and Dissemination reports in partnership with WP leaders.
Identifying, reporting on and mitigating commercial and Exploitation / dissemination
risks in partnership with the Project Manager.
Convening Exploitation and Dissemination meetings (as and when necessary, no less
than every 6 months).
Legal obligations and IPR issues
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Before the signing of the contract the UserMedia partners will sign a Consortium Agreement in
which the rights of each partner will be specified. The agreement will take into account the
typical rights that each partner has according to the specification given by the European
Commission in the 7th Framework.
The UserMedia partners have a joint responsibility for achieving project objectives within time
and budget. The contractors recognize their special responsibility towards the other participants
in project regarding planning, managing shared activities, obtaining software or licenses and
music rights to use deliverables and products for clearly agreed duration. The contractors plan to
agree that availability, usage and IPR rights issues relating to Deliverables will be governed
according to the ownership and availability categories set out in the technical annex to the
contract. The categories listed against each deliverable may be adjusted and new deliverables
added during the project only by formal agreement of the Project Committee. Any such change
will be recorded by the Project Manager in the minutes of the meetings of the Committee
meeting.
The consortium agreement will start from the main guidelines provided from the European
Commission. Moreover, for the definition of the agreement the following aspects will be taken
into account:
•
•
The availability and the protection of already available material provided by the partners
(background technology) with their corresponding value on the market.
The percentage of the investment performed by the single partners in each specific
Workpackage that will provide the basis for producing the results and the trials. The
investment may include also the additional internal investments that each partner could
perform for adding additional unplanned results to the project.
2.1.4
Communication flow Mechanisms and Procedures
For distributing information among partners, the internet will be used. A project management
system based on the web-based OPMCreator tool will be set up. This UserMedia Project website
will have both a public and private section. Every partner will be capable of downloading from
the website the most updated version of the deliverables. The website will be also used for
posting and exchanging reports and cumulating common documents useful for the project. Some
of these will be public. Specific working meetings will be organized according to the work
planned. Every meeting will be documente, and all the project ommunications will be collected
and made available through the website.
All deliverables will be subject to peer review via OPMCreator, and will be agreed upon at
Workpackage meetings before formal quality assurance activities are undertaken.
2.1.5
Conflict Resolution
Potential conflicts will be brought to the immediate attention of the Project Manager by the
appropriate Technical Manager or Steering Committee member. The Project Manager will then
attempt to resolve this by discussion or by the calling of a Technical or Management meeting.
If the management team(s) within the relevant partner(s) cannot produce a written resolution of
the potential conflict within four weeks, the issue(s) will be brought to the attention of the SC. If
despite all efforts no decision can be reached on the conflicting issues unanimously, the prime
contractor has the right to reach a decision by majority vote of the Administration Committee.
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2.1.6
2.1.6.1
Decision-Making Mechanisms
Steering Committee Mechanisms
The SC shall meet at least every six months, or more often if necessary. The Project Manager
will convene the SC meetings with at least 15 days written notice with an
agenda. This agenda will propose the decisions to be made by the SC. Notification will be
provided to each Consortium Partner. Before each six-monthly SC, a Technical Committee
meeting will be held. The SC will take advice and input from the periodic Advisory Board
meetings.
Minutes of the SC meetings are produced by the Project Manager and then sent to all participants
and concerned parties for approval.
Observers may attend meetings (upon invitation by the SC members), however they shall have
no voting power.
The Steering Committee shall not make decisions on behalf of the Project unless a majority of
two-thirds of its members are present or represented ("quorate"). Where decisions are to be taken
unanimously, all Parties must be represented at the meeting.
Each Management Representative shall have one vote. Decisions are made by consensus
or by simple majority in case consensus is not possible. Decisions on major changes to the work
plan are made by a majority of 75 % of the votes of the Parties present or represented by a proxy.
In case of major disagreement between the partners, provisions made in the UserMedia
Consortium Agreement will prevail.
Decisions that have not been proposed on time on the original agenda will be submitted to the
vote by correspondence of the absent members of the SC. Their votes will be included in the 75
% vote.
For major conflicts, for example a defaulting partner, the Consortium Agreement will provide
information about SC responsibilities and voting rights.
If the Management representative of a company changes or cannot participate in a
decisionmaking meeting, the Partner will notify this - by letter or e-mail - to the Project Manager
who will inform the other Partners.
2.1.6.2
Technical Meeting Mechanisms
The TC shall meet every three months, or more often if necessary. The Technical Manager will
convene the TC meetings with at least 14 days written notice with an agenda.
Minutes of the meetings of the TC are written by the Technical Manager and then sent to all
participants and concerned parties.
The decisions will be made by consensus or by simple majority in the case that consensus is not
possible.
Decisions will be made by consensus. In case of major disagreement between the TC
members, the issue will be brought to the SC and will be submitted to vote.
2.1.7
Match to Complexity & Scale of the Project
The structure of the UserMedia Management process and the number of and nature of
committees has been chosen to match the needs of a STREP of this nature. Much of the day-today work will be managed at the Workpackage level, and coordinated by the Technical
Committee. The Steering Committee will have a broad overview remit for the project as a whole,
taking into account the valuable inputs from the periodical Advisory Board meeting. To ensure
effective dissemination of project results and exploitation of project outcomes, the Exploitation
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Committee will convene as necessary (more frequently in the latter phases of the Project) to
effectively steer, and deliver upon these vital activities.
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1.4
Individual participants
2.1.8 Futurmatix Limited
Organisation Description
Futurmatix provides technology research services for commercial and industrial clients within the Digital
Audiovisual and Communications sectors. Areas of expertise include:
Digital Content Management, Content security technology, Authoring Systems (Multimedia, DVD, iTV,
Mobile, Digital Rights Management, Electronic Content Guides, Home Media Servers, technology focused
user needs analysis, and Search Technology.
Futurmatix conducts internal Research and Development, but is also very experienced in collaborative research
work, involving partner companies and institutions.
Main Tasks Attributed
Futurmatix will act as Project Coordinator and will manage the project as a whole. In addition to this,
Futurmatix will Manage Workpackage 2, User Needs Analysis.
Futurmatix will also contribute to research within Workpackage 3, Workpackage 4 and will also be very
active within Workpackage 6.
Previous Experience Related to Tasks
Futurmatix staff have managed joint research activities involving partners as far apart as Japan and the USA,
and have also project managed international, multi-partner European Commission funded research projects,
including Project Management and Exploitation Management of the EU Multimedia Technology research
project MIPS, the development of the DVD platform, development of Japan’s first interactive TV system,
internet-based digital music commercial portals, mobile multimedia development for the Symbian platform and
numerous other digital multimedia related projects. In addition, Futurmatix staff have conducted technology
focused User Needs Analysis work for commercial, industrial and military clients, and have developed unique
tools for data gathering and for of objective assessment of user needs data.
Key Staff Members Profiles
Lindsay Holman (Managing Director)
Lindsay Holman is Managing Director of Futurmatix, and is responsible for all aspects of the company’s
operation as well as representing major clients in Europe in a number of technology-related areas,
including mobile and home networked audiovisual technology platforms development, and
standardization activities on a European and Global basis.
Prior to this he was Director of Panasonic OWL, Panasonic's European R&D Centre specialising in nextgeneration Audio-Visual-Communications (AVC) technology development. Lindsay's career spans some
25 years within the computing and digital media industries. Qualified in Geophysics and Computing, he
first Worked with Britoil as an Exploration Researcher before moving to the defense industry with
Marconi as Project Manager and latterly Business Development Manager, developing simulators and
trainers for the military, industrial and commercial sectors. During this time, he project managed more
than 20 different contracts, individually of anything up to £4.5m in value, and with a Project staff of up to
60 engineers. He also set up and managed a User Needs Analysis department. Lindsay subsequently
entered the publishing world with Pearson as Business Development Consultant and latterly as Senior
Publisher for multimedia and electronic publishing products. On moving to the consumer electronics
industry with Panasonic, Lindsay took on the role of Development Manager for the development of the
world’s first DVD Authoring system, a three-site development between the UK, Japan, and the USA He
also helped to promote the DVD format in Europe, and set up Europe's first DVD Production centre in
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London, in partnership with Electric Switch. Latterly, as Director of the R&D Centre, Lindsay was
involved in the areas of Digital interactive TV, Electronic Media Distribution, Content Management,
Mobile Multimedia platform development, Content Protection and Digital Rights Management technology
development. Lindsay has provided expert support to the European Commission’s R&D directorates over
a period of 15 years in the form of Project Evaluations, Reviews and Framework consultation, and has
also been project / exploitation manager for MIPS, a large EC R&D project.
George Robertson (Principal Engineer)
George is Futurmatix' Principal Engineer, and has considerable R&D experience. Prior to working with
Futurmatix, George was senior software engineer at Panasonic and the BBC. He has extensive experience
of broadcast R&D including; IPTV, DVB, DAB and DRM. He was technical representative for both the
BBC and Panasonic at international standards bodies, industry consortia and broadcasting regulators.
Immediately prior to joining Fututmatix, George was IPTV Project Leader at MGt PLC to provide a
complete ‘end to end solution’ for IPTV. Before that he was a Research Fellow at the School of Computer
Science at the University of St Andrews, where he worked on commercialisation of a digital video fingerprinting technology. At Panasonic George worked on DVB-MHP implementation, Digital Teletext
(MHEG), DVB & DVD subtitles, and systems for reception, trans-coding and streaming of digital radio
(DAB). He also conducted research into Digital Rights Management and TV-Anytime (digital personal
recorder) systems.
As a Research & Development Engineer with the BBC's R&D group, George worked on European
collaborative projects (e.g. STORit, MyTV), and participated in several standards bodies and consortia
(e.g. DVB, MPEG, DAVIC, TV-Anytime). Prior to this, George was a Research Assistant at the
Department of Computer Science, University of Glasgow, researching real-time audio and video
applications and network media servers, using an experimental computer network.
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2.1.9 Lancaster University
Lancaster University is an internationally recognised Centre of Excellence for Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT). The Computing Department has been active in Networking and Distributed Computing
research for the past seventeen years and during the 1990s was instrumental in the development of the
European COST communities that were evident in the COST 237, 263 and 264 Actions and more recently in
E-NEXT, the Framework 6 Network of Excellence on Emerging Network Technologies. The Networking and
Distributed Computing group is well known for its work on communications protocols and services, and in
middleware developments, with a strong emphasis on Quality of Service (QoS) and on multimedia and
multipeer applications, distributed content management and content distribution networks. In these areas alone,
we have a significant critical mass in of around 65 members working, run around 30 research projects, and
have an annual income of £1.5 million. Lancaster has a reputation as a technical leader in our field—for
example, the 2002 International Review of UK Research in Computer Science cites us as one of only a handful
of sites undertaking “leading-edge systems research”.
Lancaster University was a pioneer in the area of QoS architectures during the mid 1990s, and in more recent
years has done leading edge work on multimedia caching, multimedia indexing and content management, IPv6
and mobility, and application level multicast and overlay networks.
The Department has considerable support from the EPSRC (the UK national research council), from the
European Commission, and directly from industry. A persistent theme running through the group's research is
co-operation with industry. Recently an IPv6 testbed project was launched with support from Microsoft
Research, Cisco Systems, and Orange. Other significant collaborations have been established in the past
several years with BT Research, HP Labs, Agilent Labs, Telekom Austria, CNET (France Telecom), ETRI
(Korea), Lucent, Intel and Qinetiq. The group has a fine publication record and has a tradition of strong
dissemination of research results both directly to industry and through International standardisation bodies such
as the ISO and the ITU-T. In the past five years the group has hosted the Middleware '98 Conference, the
MPEG-7 Test and Evaluation Ad Hoc Group meeting, and the RM2000 and IDMS 2001 International
Workshops
Lancaster plays a key-role in the project since it has major interests in a number of UserMedia areas.
Lancaster contributes to all major tasks, specifically to WP3 (where it is Task leader for T3.1 Overall
Architecture, and Sub-Task 3.1.1 and 3.1.4). Further, Lancaster leads WP 4, technology Development in
which it also leads Task 4.4, Use Trial Integrated Prototype Development. Lancaster is also task leader of
WP 5, User Trials, where it will specifically the user trials related to the e-Campus infrastructure. Lancaster
will further contribute to WP-2, User Modelling, but to a minor extend.
Lancaster has been working on issues related to content management, pervasive content use and content
distribution networks for a number of years. For instance an interactive content infrastructure has been set up
within the e-Campus project The overall aim of the e-Campus initiative is to create a large-scale facility that
provides ubiquitous computing facilities for all staff, students and visitors to the University campus. The eCampus provides a totally unique resource, extending far beyond existing ubiquitous computing test-beds and
enabling researchers at Lancaster to conduct longitudinal experiments involving a very large user community.
Content networking issues are currently addressed in a number of projects such as the EU FP6 NoE Content,
EU FP6 IP ENTHRONE and the EPRSC-funded AVA project and the EPSRC/DTI funded RETRIEVE.
Dr. Andreas Mauthe: Andreas Mauthe is a Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University and has been working in the
area of distributed and multimedia systems, content management and content distribution for more than 15
years. Prior to joining Lancaster University, he was heading a research group at the Multimedia
Communications Lab (KOM) of the Technical University of Darmstadt. The group covered a wide range of
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peer systems.
After completing his PhD in Lancaster in 1997 Andreas worked for more than four years in different positions
in industry. He was General Manager UK Operations and member of the division's management board of the
Content Management Systems Division of tecmath AG (now blue order). As Chief Development Officer
(CDO) for the same company he was in charge of the development of the asset & content management system
media archive® (heading a group of 28 software, quality and documentation engineer). Further, he was
responsible for a number of customer as well as European funded research projects. Andreas’s first degree is in
Wirtschaftsinformatik (applied economics and computer science) from the University of Mannheim, Germany.
Dr. Adrian Friday: Adrian Friday started his research career at Lancaster University with the award of his PhD
in distributed systems support for Mobile Computing in 1996. A decade later, now a senior lecturer, Adrian
has taken a leading role in helping establish Lancaster's international reputation for Mobile and Ubiquitous
Computing. Over a career spanning 15 years, Adrian has authored over 70 publications in major workshops
and conferences in the field and worked on over 10 projects in the Mobile and Ubiquitous domain. A well
known figure internationally, Adrian contributes actively to the research community; was general chair of the
respected WMCSA 2004 workshop and PC co-chair of the leading Ubicomp conference (Ubicomp 2006); he
also helped establish the systems support for Ubicomp workshop series and continues to actively contribute to
the research in this area. Adrian is on the TPC of numerous leading conferences including ACM MobiHoc
2005, ACM MobiSys 2006, IEEE Pervasive 2007 and is area editor for ACM SIGMOBILE's MC2R. Recently,
his interests have extended to include interaction with situated public displays (he is an architect of the eCampus project), and enabling technologies for deployable Ubiquitous Computing (he is co-investigator on the
EU/IST SMS project and site manager for the Equator IRC).
Dr. Rodger Lea: Rodger Lea is an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC)in Canada and
a EPSRC visiting research fellow at Lancaster University. He currently researches into the area of media
centric services for ubiquitous computing environments and holds funding from a variety of national sources
and a number of industrial partners. Prior to joining Lancaster he worked for 15 years in the consumer
electronics industry most recently creating and running Sony's prestigious silicon valley research lab where he
was responsible for generating over 100 patents and contributing technologies to a range of product groups.
Rodger has published extensively and chaired the ETSI VRML2.0 working group, the HAVi home networking
group as well as contributing to a variety of media centric standards groups including ATSC, DVB-MHP,
OCAP and Java-TV.
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2.1.10 University of Mannheim
The University of Mannheim consists of five faculties; the largest ones are the faculty of business
administration and the faculty of law and economics. The University has about 11,500 students in the Spring
semester 2007. In the area of computer networks and multimedia systems, the group known as Praktische
Informatik IV under the direction of Prof. Effelsberg has focused on research into protocols and applications
for wireless networks, and multimedia content analysis. In particular, the group's research concentrates on
efficient protocols for vehicle-to-vehicle communication and for sensor networks, and on the applications of
these protocols to multimedia communications. The group currently consists of Professor Effelsberg and 10
research staff members. It enjoys excellent research collaboration with NEC's C&C Research Laboratories in
Heidelberg, Siemens Corporate Technology in Munich and many other companies and research labs. The
group of Praktische Informatik IV has done a lot of joint research activities in the last years and worked in
international European Commission funded search projects like the COST 437 and 264 Actions, the E-NEXT
Framework 6 of Network on Excellence on Emerging Network Technologies, the DELOS Network of
Excellence on Digital Libraries and the FP5 research project European Chronicles Online (ECHO). We had a
successful cooperation with several partners of the UserMedia project in earlier projects, e.g., the University of
Oslo and Blue Order (formally Techmath AG).
The University of Mannheim will contribute to the work packages WP2 to WP6 of the project. In work
package WP2 we will analyze the way in which users would like to organize their digital media devices, such
as the PC, media players and video game boxes, and their content. This includes analysis of the most popular
processing tools. Our main contributions will be in work packages WP3 and WP4. In work package WP3 we
will contribute to the overall architecture and focus on the design of the video analysis and processing tools,
the algorithms for the automatic adaptation and the interface to the content management and storage
management platform. In work package WP4 we will implement, test and integrate our digital video analysis
tools and the video adaptation algorithms into the UserMedia trial platform. In work package WP5 we will
run an extensive user evaluation with customers of PrimeTel to evaluate the quality and acceptance of the
adapted videos. In work package WP6 we will contribute to the technology transfer, including the transfer of
our code to a commercial software company for marketing and sale.
Current research projects of Praktische Informatik IV related to the proposed UserMedia project are the Movie
Content Analysis (MoCA) project which investigates automatic content analysis of audio and video data to
provide semantic information for indexing and retrieval. The Video AOI project focuses on the automatic
optical inspection of IC boards based on video analysis to identify defects n boards. Goals of the Wireless
Sensor Network project are to improve the communication in sensor networks and aggregate multimedia data
captured by low-powered sensor nodes. SpoVNet (Spontaneous Virtual Networks) is a cooperative scientific
project where we combine new protocols and algorithms from networking and multimedia applications with
the focus on online games and video streaming. The large Mobile Business research project is building
technology and a generic software platform for location-based and context-based applications; in this context
we focus on the automatic adaptation of visual content to enable viewing of images and web pages on arbitrary
devices.
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Effelsberg is the head of the Praktische Informatik IV research group. He received his
Diploma in electrical engineering in 1976 and Dr.-Ing. degree in computer science in 1981 from the Technical
University of Darmstadt, Germany. From 1981-1984 he worked in the United States. He was an Assistant
Professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson, then a Post-Doctoral Fellow at IBM Research in San Jose,
California. In 1984 he returned to Germany where he joined IBM's newly founded European Networking
Center in Heidelberg. From 1984-1989 he led a research group working on the design and implementation of
communication protocols and applications for networks. In 1989 he joined the University of Mannheim as a
full professor for computer science where he now teaches computer networks and multimedia technology.
Professor Effelsberg is a member of the editorial board of ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing,
Communications and Applications, he was a member of the editorial boards of IEEE Multimedia and Kluwer
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(now Springer) Multimedia Tools and Applications, and he has served on the program committees for the
ACM and IEEE multimedia conferences and many other national and international conferences.
Dr. Stephan Kopf studied Wirtschaftsinformatik (applied economics and computer science) at the University of
Mannheim and completed his PhD in computer science in March 2007. He is working as PostDoc in the
Computer Science IV research team in Mannheim. His research interests are multimedia content analysis and
new learning technologies, especially the usage of mobile devices in lectures. A focus of his research is on
video analysis, video indexing and the visualization of multimedia content on mobile devices.
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2.1.11 University of Oslo
University of Oslo (Norway)
The University of Oslo (UiO) - the largest University in Norway, with approximately 30,000 students
and 4,600 employees. The Department of Informatics (Ifi) at the was founded in 1977, and carries out
teaching and international research in all major IT disciplines. The DMMS group currently has four
faculty members, 12 PhD students and around 50 master students.
The Distributed Multimedia Systems (DMMS) Research Group at the University of Oslo has strong
experience in the area of flexible and adaptive transport protocols and middleware, including adaptive
overlays for content distribution. Furthermore, the group is addressing the integration of networking,
middleware, and data management issues, for example by using classical database management
systems and modern data stream technology for traffic analysis and network monitoring. Based on
this expertise the group is well prepared to contribute to related tasks in the UserMedia project.
The DMMS group collaborates closely with other leading European research institutions, e.g., in the
following EU projects (6th Framework Programme, IST): ANA (Autonomic Network Architecture)
project - IP SAC, Midas (Middleware Platform for Developing and Deploying Advanced Mobile
Services), Content (Content Networks and Services for Home Users) and E-Next (Emerging
Networking Experiments and Technologies) – two Networks-of-Excellence (6th Framework
Programme, EU IST), and in the European Science Foundation Programme MiNEMA on Middleware
for Network Eccentric and Mobile Applications. The group is also a member of Intels IXA University
Program.
Role in the project: The DMMS research group will focus its contribution in UserMedia on research
and development of the core elements of the envisaged content management platform, i.e., the
Distributed Data Repository. The group will mainly contribute to design and develop data and
metadata management solutions for UserMedia (WP3). An important role will also be to bring
knowledge, skills and concrete results gained in the Content, Midas, INSTANCE II, and Ad-Hoc
InfoWare projects to the UserMedia project. Further, UiO will be contributing to WP4, more
specifically it will be leading Task4.1 Design and implementation of Distributed Contetn Discovery,
Management and Metadata Management components.
The DMMS group specializes in system support for distributed systems, and especially the
intersection of three traditionally separate issues: (1) communication protocols, (2) data management,
and (3) operating systems. Current projects of specific relevance to UserMedia are the Content,
MIDAS, INSTANCE II, and Ad-hoc InfoWare projects. INSTANCE II and Ad-Hoc InfoWare are
nationally funded projects. INSTANCE II is about content distribution infrastructures for News-onDemand services, and develops an adaptive (i.e. resource-aware, QoS-aware and location-aware)
overlay network. The Ad-Hoc InfoWare project specifically addresses development of middleware
services for mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs), in the challenging context of support for emergency
and rescue workers in the field. The work has resulted in a deep understanding of domain
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requirements and opportunities, and the group has developed an overall architecture of the
middleware components needed to support such applications. The project has also implemented
emulation tools for the development and evaluation of middleware services for MANETs.
The following team of researchers will actively perform research in the project and guide the doctoral
students:
• Vera Goebel is Professor in the DMMS group at IFI. Her research interests include database
systems, operating systems, middleware for multimedia and MANET applications, QoS,
distributed systems, and data stream management systems.
• Ellen Munthe-Kaas is Associate Professor in the DMMS group at IFI. Her current research
interests include middleware with an emphasis on information management and sharing,
ontologies, and context-aware architectures and models.
• Thomas Plagemann is Professor at IFI where he heads the DMMS Group. His research
interests include multimedia middleware for multimedia and MANET applications, QoS,
operating system support for distributed multimedia systems, and data stream management
systems for network monitoring.
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2.1.12 Blue Order
Blue Order’s core business is the development of Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions for
companies that are creating, managing, distributing, and marketing rich media. Blue Order’s solutions
help large media and entertainment companies, corporations and public institutions to collect, index,
catalogue, retrieve and distribute rich media content, improving content-related workflows and
maximizing the return on content assets. Blue Order is continuously developing its core product
Media Archive® to cover an increasing spectrum of customer requirements by standard product
functionality and configuration options. While Blue Order’s core market is broadcast, this continuing
development has enabled Blue Order to expand into other audiovisual DAM application areas with
similar requirements. Blue Order is headquartered in Germany and operates sales and support offices
in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Media Archive, Blue Order’s Media Asset Management platform, today is used by more than 3,000
users every day at many of the world’s largest broadcasters, including ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG,
Germany’s largest private broadcaster, Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF, one of Germany’s largest
public broadcasters), Swiss Radio, YLE (Finland), NRK (Norway), Technicolor Network Services
(United Kingdom), NBC Olympics and CDC (both United States). Media Archive is available in two
product lines: The workgroup-level Media Archive® professional comes as an easy-to-deploy, costeffective entry level solution with a preconfigured data model and no access to the API or the
Datamanager SDK. Media Archive® enterprise scales to hundreds and thousands of users and offers
a wide variety of custom configuration options and integration packages, making it the ideal platform
for enterprise-scale MAM solutions. Media Archive enterprise also includes the license to use the
API and the DataManager SDK.
Blue Order organises annual Media Archive User Group meetings. This information exchange
between Blue Order and its customers enables continuous improvement of the product and ensures the
Media Archive roadmap meets market requirements. News on product releases and events are
distributed twice a year.
Blue order is mainly involved in two workpackages (WP3 and 4), specifically to sub-task 3.1.3, Workflow
Engine, and Task 4.3. Workflow Engine and Content Services
Blue Order is active in the CMS and DAM space since 1995. Major research contributions included the
European funded projects EUROMEDIA, DiVAN, AMICITIA, PRIMAVERA, OPAL, CARO, AVIR,
MULTIPRO, ECHO, and EXTRAMINT, and locally funded research projects MassComp, Media
Environment, H2O4M, I-Search, and L3. In addition, Blue Order delivers workflow engine driven Content
Management solutions to broadcast customers across the globe, including some of the largest references in this
domain.
Blue Order maintains an active membership in the following associations:
•
Fernseh- und Kinotechnische Gesellschaft (FKTG) e.V., Germany
•
International Association of Broadcasting Manufacturers (IABM), United Kingdom
•
Advanced Authoring Format Association (AAF) Inc., USA
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•
National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), USA
Dr. Peter THOMAS
Peter Thomas, born 1963, received his diploma and his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from Munich
Technical University in 1989 and 1996, respectively. From July 1996 to June 2005 he was with Blue
Order AG, a systems integration and software engineering company based in Kaiserslautern,
Germany. Blue Order’s main product is Media Archive, an Enterprise Media Asset Management
System for the broadcast industry. During his first years with Blue Order, he managed several large
research projects, including the European Community funded ESPRIT–Project 20636 EUROMEDIA.
As Chief Technology Officer he was responsible for technology strategy, product design and overall
co-ordination of all research and product development activities, with a focus on enterprise content
management systems.
From July 2005 to October 2006, Peter worked as an independent consultant, focusing on business
process analysis, proposal generation, market analysis and project management in the digital asset
management domain. In November 2006 he joined Blue Order Solutions AG who subsequently
acquired Blue Order AG. As Chief Technology Officer and member of the executive board Peter now
is responsible for research and product development of both companies.
Peter is a member of the SMPTE. He is one of the principle authors of the final report of the EBU
project group "Future Television Archives" (P/FTA), and has extensively published in the area of
media asset management in broadcast. He is co-author of the book "Professional Content
Management - Handling Digital Media Assets".
Dr. Thomas Kunkelmann
Dr. Thomas Kunkelmann graduated from the university of Darmstadt in 1992 as Master of Computer
Science. Following his degree he spent five years at the university as a researcher in digital video
technology while working on his Ph. D. thesis on video data confidentiality as a Quality of Service
parameter for Digital Video Transmissions. During this time, he managed several smaller research
projects.
After receiving his Ph. D. degree in 1998, he joined Tecmath/ Blue Order as a project manager, taking
over immediate responsibility for several important research projects (among them the ESPRIT
projects DiVAN and AVIR, and the EU-IST projects AMICITIA and PRIMAVERA), and becoming
Head of Research and Development department. As a project manager in business projects with
international broadcasters (among them ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, Bayerischer Rundfunk, and the
Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK), Dr. Kunkelmann became responsible for design and
development of large-scale DAM system installations at Blue Order. His primary fields of expertise
are in video encoding and communication.
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2.1.13 Tandberg ASA
TANDBERG offers end-to-end visual communication solutions that are tailored to the specific needs
of each customer. Through our management tools, video systems, infrastructure and services, we
provide the best possible video experience. TANDBERG's mission is to change the way people
communicate. Our vision of the future anticipates a world in which all communication is completely
natural. It is unencumbered by technology. Natural communication is the ability to interact with - a
co-worker, customer, or supplier - as if you were in the same room. TANDBERG opens 2007 with the
largest market share of any videoconferencing provider in both endpoints and infrastructure. Installed
base in over 90 countries. Users include over half of the Fortune 50, 21 of the 25 world's largest banks
and 65 of the top 100 universities.
TANDBERG has been an innovator in video technology since 1989. TANDBERG R&D department
consists of over 240 highly skilled employees. 190 of them based at the headquarter in Lysaker,
Norway and the remaining 50 in R&D branches in UK, The Netherlands and New Zealand.
In addition to the traditional video conferencing systems, TANDBERG also offers a Content Server to
complement the solution. This server is integrated with the video conferencing and offers easy to use,
automated services to the user. TANDBERG offers high-end tele-presence/meeting room systems
with HD cameras to desktop video endpoints and PC based soft-clients. The TANDBERG Entrypoint
(3G GW) includes handheld, resource constrained devices (mobile handsets) into the overall system.
Role in the project: TANDBERG will contribute with requirements, needs and experience within
the field. The prototype of next generation services developed during the project will enable rapid
dissemination of results and technology transfer into product upgrades and emerging
products/services in the field. TANDBERG’s intention is to stay on the bleeding edge both in the
videoconferencing market, and also when it comes to content services. To achieve this it is
necessary to influence standardization and the way industry moves, TANDBERG will use the
project results and experiences as important input here.
TANDBERG R&D consists of Software and Hardware professionals performing research and
development tasks in-house. A highly competitive videoconferencing market requires market
awareness and the ability to follow the technological trends and research stat-of-the art.
TANDBERG’s total solution is under constant development and improvement.
Mr. Tom Kristensen holds an MSc in Communications Networks, with specialization in distributed
multimedia systems from the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo. He joined Thales
Norway in 1997 working Senior Engineer R&D in the Concept Development and Experimentation
department. He has a solid background in network protocols, multimedia communications and
middleware. From 1999 – 2003 he was employed as a Research Assistant in the Distributed
Multimedia Systems research group at University of Oslo. From 2005 he is working as Senior
Software Developer at TANDBERG.
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Mr. Geir Arne Sandbakken holds a Bachelor of Computer Science at the University of Oslo. Cofounder of Consilio Research in 1995, and of Internet Technology specializing in network protocols.
Acquired by TANDBERG in 1999 the main area of responsibility is enabling the best visual
communications using Internet protocols. He is currently leading the SIP development team, and he is
representing TANDBERG at the SIP Forum. He is also active in the IMTC SIP AG, and at the IETF.
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2.1.14 Primetel
PrimeTel is a telecommunication and information technology company and is the largest alternative
provider in Cyprus with its own autonomous nation wide fixed network infrastructure (fiber optic
network of 8 Gbps) and international network. PrimeTel owns and operates a truly regional network,
spanning through Cyprus, Greece, UK and Russia, providing voice, data and IP services to business
and wholesale services to carriers, mobile operators, content and internet providers. Through its
broadband network, PrimeTel is one of the first companies able to provide true Triple Play Services
(Telephony, Internet, IP TV) to home, business and corporate customers. Also was one of the first
companies to offer integrated mobile content delivery products via IVR, MMS and SMS converged
with a billing system
Primetel has more than 100 highly skilled employees with vast experience and expertise in
networking, telephony and Telecom Financing. The in-house development team has developed the
IPTV middleware, IPTV video monitoring system, Triple-play ADSL connectivity provisioning and
management, integrated with billing as well as IVR/SMS/MMS platforms, Integrated Billing System
etc.
Role in the project: The main role of Primetel is to provide the essential test beds for conducting of
wide area user trial and to help with the development of the prototype system. Primetel will provide
the essential network infrastructure as well as the appropriate human resources (engineers,
programmers etc) for the development of an integrated prototype of the UserMedia system in WP4
and will validate the system in a wide area cell phone environment by conducting a full scale user
trial in WP5. In addition Primetel will offer considerable experience in multimedia content delivery
through various devices, including TV via STB, mobile phones and Internet. Primetel can provide
useful data to analyze and investigate the impact of the proposed system/solution using its current
customer database.
PrimeTel has a strong in-house research and development team consisting of Java, Perl and .NET
programmers with expertise in networking, telephony and Telecom Financing, which undertake large
technological projects. This team has developed the IPTV middleware, IPTV video monitoring
system, Triple-play ADSL connectivity provisioning and management, integrated with billing as well
as IVR/SMS/MMS platforms, Integrated Billing System etc. PrimeTel’s R&D Team is responsible for
the development and optimization of PrimeTel’s telecom services as well as for the development of
new innovative services/products. Also this team designed and developed a platform for delivery of
mobile content products via IVR, MMS and SMS converged with a billing system.
Mr. Theodosis Theodosiou holds an MSc in Communications Networks and Software from the
School of Electronics and Physical Sciences of the University of Surrey and a Diploma from Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki in Electrical and Computer Engineering with specialization in
Telecommunications. He joined Thunderworx Ltd (Internet Service Provider) in 2002 starting as a
Network Engineer. Since 2004 he is with PrimeTel Limited as the Manager of Regulatory Affairs and
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Interconnect Department where he is involved with telecom regulatory and interconnection issues,
product and services development strategy as well as coordination of projects.
Mr. Vladimir A. Ivashchenko received his diploma in Computer Science from Intercollege, Cyprus
and also received an Associate of Computer Science Diploma from the University of Indianapolis. He
has great experience in Telecom Systems Design and Engineering, Network Security, Network
programming, Software development, System administration, Integration of various Communication
facilities and has participated in various Open Source Projects (GPL). Since 2004, holds the position
of Chief Technology Officer in PrimeTel and he was involved in several R&D projects related to
company’s products and services, network monitoring, traffic billing etc.
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1.5
The UserMedia Consortium as a whole
Complementarity and balance of the UserMedia Partners
University
University
Mannheim
Mannheim
University
University
Oslo
OfofOslo
Lancaster
Lancaster
University
University
User
trials
Dissemination &
Standards
Conrtibution
Interfaces
Distributed &
Pervasive CMS
Blue
Order
Blue Order
Futurmatix
Futurmatix
Workflow
Engine
Personal CMS
Coordinator
Commercial
Exploitation
Primetel
Primetel
User
Modelling
Tandberg
Tandberg
Video Indexing &
Adaption
University
Company (SME)
Main Contributors
Contirbutors
Figure 8 : the UserMedia Consortium
The project consortium has been put together considering the main objectives of the project.
Figure 8 above depicts the role of the different partners in the project. The tasks on the right hand
side are related to the system development aspects whereas the left hand side illustrates the
interaction of the project with the outside. Each partner contributes with their specific areas of
expertise whereas together they form a well-balanced consortium representing all aspects of the
project. More specifically, the three universities are dealing with the major research areas and
technical challenges in the project. They provide the backbone of the UserMedia system and
carry out key-research in the area of personal, distributed and pervasive content management.
The main task in this context is the distributed and pervasive content management system itself.
This is jointly worked on by University of Oslo and Lancaster University. The focus of the work
of UiO is on metadata aspects whereas ULanc is dealing with the distributed storage
management and specific challenges emerging through the pervasive nature of the application
context. Further, ULanc has also a specific interest in the impact of such a system in a distributed
and pervasive content environment as represented through its eCampus infrastructure. University
of Mannheim’s interest focus on added value service such as video indexing and video
adaptation. These are essential in a distributed and pervasive content management environment
since they help the user to cope with the abundance of content. Together with key industry
partners these institutions provide the core expertise required to realise the UserMedia system.
Industrial / commercial Involvement in UserMedia for exploitation
Blue order as industrial technology part has an inherent interest in the technology development
with the potential of its reuse within their product and service offerings. Specifically it is
interested in Workflow Management aspects which facilitate content handling in the distributed
and pervasive content environment.
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Primetel is a telecommunication and information technology company with a focus on the new
services beyond telecommunication that are created by UserMedia.
Tandberg, as an equipment manufacturer, has a two-fold interest in the project; it is interested in
the impact of the UserMedia technology on their products and would also like to influence
standardisation in order to enable the widespread adoption of such a system.
Futurmatix as a technology research company, bridges the gap between the research oriented
universities, the industry partner and the user side. The industry partners together with the
technology and knowledge transfer initiatives at the university ensure appropriate and direct
commercial exploitation of the project results.
Balance of UserMedia partners with respect to the objectives of the project.
Real members of the public, as users, are represented throughout the two user trials. Their input
will be considered through WP2 and WP5. In addition, different stakeholders ranging from
professional content companies to equipment manufactures form part of the wider consortium
through the Advisory Board. Thus, the project has sufficient input to create an innovative but
also relevant system addressing future user needs while considering industry interests.
Thus, the consortium does not only cover all relevant areas derived from the project’s objectives
but also does this in a well organised and well co-ordinated manner. This is demonstrated
through the distribution of work packages and the assigned tasks within. As can be clearly seen,
all tasks are well- connected and linked in with the overall project objectives. The partners have
worked together in commercial and research projects before. Thus, they have a good
understanding of the areas of expertise and each other’s capabilities. The consortium is therefore
not only well balanced as far as the capabilities of the partners is concerned but also has already
an established mode of collaboration.
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1.6
Resources to be committed
2.1.15 Other Major Costs
There are no other major costs incurred by the UserMedia consortium beyond that assigned to
Research and Development, Management, Travel costs and allowed overheads.
2.1.16 Mobilisation of Resources
The project comprises a total of 453 Person-Months, of which (approximately) 5.5% are
assigned to Management, 6.3% assigned to User Modelling and Analysis, 21% assigned to
Architecture, 37% assigned to Technology Development, 16% assigned to User trials and 11%
assigned to Technology Transfer and dissemination, which offers a good balance and
mobilisation of resources between R&D activities and supporting activities for the project.
2.1.17 Resource Integration and Financial Plan
Resources have been carefully assigned across all partners to ensure that there is an appropriate
level of Person-Month effort per partner per workpackage (where they are involved in a WP),
and that there are sufficient resources defined for travel and support activities for all partners for
the full duration of the Project. A full financial plan was created by the UserMedia consortium
prior to completion of A3 forms to ensure that the total budget was commensurate with the
resources allocated and Partner financial liabilities.
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3
Impact
3.1
Expected impacts listed in the work programme
UserMedia has an opportunity to have significant impact on the ways that consumer create,
manage and use media. In turn, this has the ability to impact the way that European industry
leverages the results of UserMedia to deliver innovative products. The work program highlights
three broad areas for impact, we detail below how UserMedia relates to those areas.
•
World leadership in a new generation of media technologies providing significantly
higher performances in terms of intelligence, scalability, flexibility, speed, capacity, ease
of use and cost.
UserMedia intends to develop a new generation of media technologies focused on the
personal media space. Our approach will offer significant advantages both to end users
and to industry. One particular focus of UserMedia is intelligent handling of personal
media data. Based on our personal media analysis (T2.1) and our user needs modelling
(T2.4) we will develop intelligent and flexible tools for personal media management
(T4.1) and indexing, searching and visualization (T4.2).
This research and development will deliver a variety of outcomes as detailed in section
1.1.3, these include
a.) Interoperable multimedia network and service infrastructure. In particular
one of our core aims is to develop a seamless and personalized experience for
media management by end users when they use different devices, adopting a
variety of roles (such as consumer, producer and manager of media). Thus,
objectives i.) multimedia services and application, ii.) home management and
control services, and iii.) media content for users in a variety of roles locations,
contexts and mobility scenarios are at the centre of the UserMedia project
b) End-to-end systems and application platforms that enable i) intuitive,
intelligent, professional and non-professional creation, manipulation,
storage/handling/search, management and rendering of media; UserMedia is
directly target at this outcome and will develop advanced, intelligent tools that
will make media management intuitive for non professionals.
•
•
To ensure that UserMedia has this impact and achieves these objectives, we have
carefully structured our work program to deliver concrete results that can be
communicated clearly, via our dissemination plan, to partners, fellow researchers and to
the wider community.
New and sustainable market opportunities based on converged business models
UserMedia directly addresses the important area of converged business models. By
developing technologies that enable end user management of personal media, they offer
an alternative route to business for companies that wish to enable end users and offers
services that put them in control. Further, the UserMedia approach offers an alternative to
the rapidly developing stranglehold that large media companies are beginning to exert
through Web2.0 platforms such as MySpace, YouTube, Google services etc.
Widespread adoption of new digital media consumption and production patterns
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UserMedia will enable more widespread adoption of digital media consumption and
production because it will enable more intelligent management of personal media. By
allowing users to have abetter control over their media and to support more intelligent
and more flexible management and use of their media it will enable new personal media
services to be developed that match closely user needs. This in turn will lead to increased
adoption. Of particular note is the potential impact on media production. Today, users
still struggle to create new media, especially when combining existing personal media
with professional media. UserMedia will enable more flexible use of media and better
search, management and edit tools, leading to more widespread production by end users.
2.1.18 Social Impact
The i2010 strategy and previous EU social policy recognises that despite all available
technology, people in modern societies feel more excluded from society, more isolated with
respect to their communities, and more disenfranchised from the system of Government and
democracy. People have become more individualistic and pursue goals independently of each
other. In addition there is an acknowledged “digital divide” further exacerbating problems of
disenfranchisement. Usermedia has the opportunity to make a positive contribution in two core
areas – digital divide and the work environment.
2.1.18.1 Impacts on digital divide
In the area of the digital divide, one clear aspect is that there is a divide between owners and
users of PC like devices in the home. There is still a significant number of European citizens
who do not have access to a home PC connected, via broadband to the internet. However, what is
a interesting is that the socio-economic stratification that causes the PC/Broadband divide is
much less prevalent when looking at cell phones. Currently the majority of European citizens
have access to a cell phone and it is being increasingly used to access internet content.
UserMedia build on this fact by targeting cell Phones as digital creation, management and
consumption devices. Our goal is to make participation in the digital society possible through
mobile devices that are integrated into the whole content management chain, including the web
component.
2.1.18.2 Impacts on work environment
Another significant area where UserMedia will have an impact is the area of the work
environment. One key aspect of a pervasive media management environment is that its will
operate in a variety of locations and in connected and disconnected roles. This will allow end
users to carry out work tasks both from home and from other non-office locations. Increasingly
European Citizens will partake in user creation for business reasons. UserMedia, by making
creation and management of media simpler and more intuitive will facilitate extended working
environments and thus have an impact on the work environment.
2.1.19 Necessary steps
The key to ensuring the success of the UserMedia project, is that the user study, discussed in
WP1 is comprehensive and insightful. By developing strong user models and a better
understanding of user requirements, we are able to develop an architecture (WP3) and the
technology (WP4) to support end user needs.
On successful completion of our trials it is clear that the dissemination steps outlined in section
3.1 below will contribute greatly. It is necessary that we ensure a broad dissemination of our
results via publications, conferences, workshop and trade shows.
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Another key factor in ensuring the impact of the work is the use and involvement of our
industrial advisory group. We plan to exploit their understanding of industry and their access to
product groups to communicate the results of our work and where possible to transfer
technologies and know-how to real business groups.
2.1.20 Work at the European level
As the i2010 - Annual Information Society Report 200718 states, innovation does not only arise
from research but is increasingly driven by users of technologies or organisational change. The
ICT policy support programme (ICT PSP) in the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme
(CIP) stimulates innovation and competitiveness through promoting wider uptake and best use of
ICT by citizens, governments and businesses, in particular SMEs. The Lisbon strategy has made
innovation a top priority and the EU has developed a comprehensive policy agenda for this
purpose.
UserMedia is a prime example of a technology that can support the European innovation
strategy, but it is also a good example of a project that needs to operate at the European level.
The management and manipulation of personal media content is rapidly migrating to large web
based services such as YouTube and MySpace – these are all sites owned or operated by US
based service providers. These sites have significant competitive advantage via branding and
presence. It is unlikely that a single European company or national project could attempt to
develop an alternative approach to these sites. However, operating across Europe and influencing
companies, research groups and user groups in several countries, UserMedia stands a reasonable
chance of having an impact at a European level and hence at at global level.
18 i2010 - Annual Information Society Report 2007, Brussels, 30. 3.2007
0
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3.1
Dissemination and exploitation of results, and management of IP
3.1.1
Plans for the explotation of project outcomes
3.1.1.1
Futurmatix Ltd
Futurmatix Ltd will use the project results from the Needs Analysis workpackage to help define
requirements for further research into user – focused Content Management technologies and also
to support work aimed at commercialising Content Management software tools in partnership
with it’s industrial clients in the digital audiovisual content sector. Futurmatix will seek to
exploit the User Taxonomy by either incorporation into existing taxonomy schemes or by
promoting the uptake of the enerated taxonomy in the research and industrial sectors through a
variety of dissemination paths as identified within this proposal.
3.1.1.2
University of Lancaster
The University of Lancaster will use the project results for academic publications at the
identified key journals and conferences. Further, results will be used in the teaching of master
courses as well as advance PhD research. For commercial exploitation Lancaster will use
existing initiatives at InfoLab21 to harness Intellectual Property and exploit the results in
collaboration with SMEs, building start-ups etc This will provide an excellent basis for
exploiting the latent commercial possibilities that will emerge from the project's research results.
3.1.1.3
University of Mannheim
The University of Mannheim will exploit the research results through the transfer of Mannheimgenerated code to a commercial software company for marketing and sale.
Mannheim will focus on the technologies for video indexing and video adaptation, with one team
member responsible for each. The scientific dissemination implies scientific publications such
as papers sumitted to conferences and scientific journals and presentations of the ideas and
results at workshops and conferences.
3.1.1.4
University of Oslo
The DMMS group of the University of Oslo, as an academic institution active in teaching and
research, is interested in the project to gain new insight, develop new solutions and publish
results in premier conferences and journals. The group will use the project to stimulate
collaboration with the international research community, and increase the project's impact, by
making concrete project results available in the public domain. With respect to teaching, the
project will provide research topics and challenges for PhD students, and so create mobile human
capital for the further dissemination of knowledge. Furthermore, the experiences and results of
the project will form useful examples and case studies for graduate level courses.
3.1.1.5
Blue Order
The advent of IP-TV strongly supports the advent of special interest channels and the movement
of the general market into “segment-of-one” markets. Blue Order sees a strong business
requirement in evolving our enterprise DAM platform to support small and divers customers,
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from very small broadcasters and content providers to individuals. This requires strong
individualisation capabilities and white label platform characteristics. Blue Order is convinced
that UserMedia will provide requirements and business cases that will allow us to develop such
product characteristics, and to test and qualify them within the scope of this project.
Within UserMedia, Blue Order will explore options to provide services that offer both
commercial content providers and end users the ability to provide references to content that they
want to share within the community, and provide the ability to allow any member of the
community to catalogue this content in detail – for free. Commercial companies will leverage the
detailed documentation created by enthusiasts, thus gaining improved access to their content as
well as very important marketing information that allows assessing the perceived value of this
content. Private users will be able to index and manage their own content, and have other
members of the community providing details they may not themselves even be aware of – and
they will be able to contribute their knowledge to serve a larger community.
Blue Order is interested in evolving their product line into a service offering that can service
such a community, and thus open a very attractive market that complements their standard
software and services portfolio.
As a service-oriented architecture, Media Archive is an ideal platform for integration of various
tools that can improve the overall management of business processes in the media industry.
Within UserMedia BlueOrder are interested in integrating tools from their project partners to
improve their service offering for the individual user, and in assessing the potential use of such
tools for their conventional customer base. Technology fields of interest are automatic content
indexing, automatic content transformation, automatic content generation, and content
distribution over various distribution channels.
Media Archive is designed to service very large enterprises and hence does not scale very well to
single seat installations. By exploiting UserMedia results, Blue Order will define the
requirements for a desktop level DAM system that retains as much functionality from the
enterprise level product as possible but still is lightweight enough to be downloaded and installed
by users who would want to run the system locally, not as part of a Web community.
3.1.1.6
Tandberg
UserMedia’s focus on user needs and behaviour together with novel approaches to digital media
sharing, management and value-adding content services makes the results and experiences from
the project applicable in Tandberg’s continuous development of products and services.
Currently, labour-intensive hand editing of metadata and indexing of video, presentations,
images and other content limits the use and adoption of Tandberg’s content services. In order to
satisfy their customer's needs and expectations, the UserMedia results such as automatic
indexing of video and other content, flexible content transcoding / transformation and the overall
content service architecture will ease the use and promote further uptake of Tandberg’s content
services.
For Tandberg, participating in UserMedia means better products, gaining important experience
from modelling and trials, and the prototype implementation will result in a deep understanding
of the real impact of the architecture. Tandberg will feed results from all parts of the project into
their R&D teams.
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3.1.1.7
Primetel
Primetel is one of the most dynamically developing Cypriot companies in the
Telecommunications and Internet sector. The primary objective of the company is to remain
close to its customers and develop tailor made solutions. The UserMedia solution is a great
investment in new technologies and infrastructure and will provide the development of new
integrated telecommunications proposals and solutions addressed to home users and businesses.
Within this framework, Primetel will use the project to develop innovative products for its
customers who would like to watch video and IPTV, to watch or manage digital photos, to listen
music anywhere and any time, using their mobiles phones, PDA, portable game consoles or any
other portable devices capable to reproduce voice and image. This will offer an excellent
opportunity to exploit the latest and very strong trend in the market of communications, which is
the management of digital content.
3.1.2
Plan For The Dissemination of Knowledge
As one of the Deliverables from WP6, UserMedia will create a Technology Transfer and
Dissemination Plan, which will be regularly updated during the project lifetime and which will
be used to guide all Dissemination activities. The dissemination activities planned for UserMedia
will include, but will not be limited to the following:
3.1.2.1
Standards Bodies
In order to disseminate the project results as widely as possible, and to promote interoperability
of content management platforms as far as possible, the UserMedia partners will ensure that
where possible and practical, valuable outcomes resulting from the research and development
and further proven within the User Trials, will be promoted to suitable standards bodies for
potential incorporation into existing standards or for assessment for suitability for the basis for,
or combination with new standardisation work. The standardization activities will be driven by
the UserMedia industry partners in co-operation with the academic partners.
In particular, work on required adaptations, extensions or changes to existing communications
protocols will be promoted for consideration to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
standardization body. Content services for mobile systems and platforms / devices used in the
UserMedia prototypes and user trials will be promoted for consideration by the Open Mobile
Alliance (OMA).
In the field of video and audio coding, and metadata development, the ITU-T is of direct
relevance, and valuable outcomes will be promoted to this body.
3.1.2.2
UserMedia website
The Project Office will be responsible for the creation and maintenance of the Project Website.
This website will have a public and a private portal. The private portal will be used for Project
administration, communication and data management. The public portal will be used to promote
visibility of the project in the early phases, to make available all public deliverables, and to
provide information on general project activities.
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3.1.2.3
Participation in international conferences/workshops
•
The Partners will participate when possible in relevant national and international
conferences and workshops, and will promote the UserMedia project and potential /
actual outcomes. Conferences will include but will not be limited to the following:
Ubicomp 2008(2009/2010) : International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing
•
Pervasive 2008 (2009/2010) : International Conference on Pervasive Computing
•
ACM Multimedia Conference 2008 (2009/2010)
•
HotMobile 2008 (2009/2010): IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and
Applications
3.1.2.4
Publication of papers
The project partners will produce papers suitable for publication in research journals and other
related publications. Journals will include but will not be limited to the following:
• ACM Multimedia Systems Journal
• IEEE Pervasive Computing Journal
• IEEE Multimedia Systems Journal
3.1.2.5
UserMedia Knowledge and Technology Transfer Workshop
A Knowledge and Technology Transfer workshop will be held in the third year of the project,
and an open invitation will be made for attendance. In addition, direct invitations will be made to
key players from the related content industry and relevant areas of academia.
The Workshop will encourage direct dialog about the project, especially explaining the conduct
and results from the two User Trials, and will expand upon the potential benefits of all the main
elements of the project results to the workshop attendees.
3.1.2.6
UserMedia DVD, leaflets and posters
Within the first six months of the Project, a leaflet and project poster(s) will be produced that
describes the project goals and targets. This will be used at all events where UserMedia has a
presence. Towards the latter part of the project, the Exploitation Committee will collaborate on
preparing a promotional DVD that explains the Project and its outcomes. This will be circulated
by the partners and by the Project Office to all potentially interested stakeholders, and will be
advertised as available on the Project’s External Website. Additional promotional materials will
also be made available for download on the Website.
3.1.3
Management of Intellectual Property
Before signing the contract with the Commission prior to commencement of the Project, the
UserMedia partners will agree a Consortium Agreement. Part of that agreement will lay out the
specific terms for management of any Intellectual Property or Knowledge that may arise from
the execution of the Project.
In particular, and notwithstanding the aforementioned Agreement, the parters will ensure that:
• Where necessary, agreement is reached with Project staff and other collaborators over the
ownership of results generated by them in the context of the Project, in order for the
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Partner to meet its obligations as set out in the Rules for Participation in the Contract
with the European Commission.
Where joint ownership is claimed, joint owners will agree among themselves on the
allocation and the terms of exercising the ownership of the knowledge. This might be for
example, where two or more Partners have jointly carried out work generating the
knowledge, and their respective share of the work cannot be ascertained.
The shares of any revenues will be defined clearly in an agreement between the relevant
parties (either in the Consortium Agreement or in a separate agreement) if they are not to
be divided equally.
In the absence of specific joint ownership agreements, any jointly owned IP rights will be
subject to the joint ownership provisions (if any) of the respective national IP laws.
Differences may exist between countries (the rights of the joint owners may be different).
Insofar as the ownership of patents relating to “jointly generated knowledge” is
concerned, it should be noted that the question of whether or not such a patent is jointly
owned will depend upon the exact scope of the claims (of the patent application(s) and,
where different in scope, that of the patent(s) granted).
In the case of Transfers of ownership, at least 60 days notification will be given to the
European Commission and other Partners, during which time they have the right to
object.
Where knowledge arising from UserMedia is capable of industrial or commercial
application, it will be protected. (this does not mandate the use of IPR protection).
Publication of knowledge (including Project web-pages) will be delayed until a decision
about its possible protection has been made.
Partners can exclude specific pre-existing know-how from the obligation to grant access
rights to other Partners but this must be done with the other contractors’ consent, and in
writing, and before the Partner concerned accedes to the European Commission contract.
The Consortium Agreement will include defined Strategies for IPR Management, and
may include tools such as a “patent pool” or cross-licensing internally to Partners and/or
third parties, or the creation of a new legal entity which will own the IP involved.
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4
Ethical Issues
4.1
General Ethical Issues regarding UserMedia
No ethical issues arise from the execution of the UserMedia project.
4.2
Countries where Research will be undertaken
No issues arise from the Countries within which the UserMedia project will be undertaken.
4.3
Ethical Committees / Organisations required to be approached
None
ETHICAL ISSUES TABLE
YES
Informed Consent
•Does the proposal involve children?
•Does the proposal involve patients or persons not able to
give consent?
•Does the proposal involve adult healthy volunteers?
•Does the proposal involve Human Genetic Material?
• Does the proposal involve Human biological samples?
• Does the proposal involve Human data collection?
Research on Human embryo/foetus
•Does the proposal involve Human Embryos?
•Does the proposal involve Human Foetal Tissue / Cells?
•Does the proposal involve Human Embryonic Stem Cells?
Privacy
•Does the proposal involve processing of genetic
information or personal data (eg. health, sexual lifestyle,
ethnicity, political opinion, religious or philosophical
conviction)
•Does the proposal involve tracking the location or
observation of people?
Research on Animals
•Does the proposal involve research on animals?
•Are those animals transgenic small laboratory animals?
•Are those animals transgenic farm animals?
•Are those animals cloned farm animals?
•Are those animals non-human primates?
Research Involving Developing Countries
•Use of local resources (genetic, animal, plant etc)
NO
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
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•Benefit to local community (capacity building i.e. access to
healthcare, education etc)
Dual Use
•Research having direct military application
•Research having the potential for terrorist abuse
ICT Implants
• Does the proposal involve clinical trials of ICT implants?
I CONFIRM THAT NONE OF THE ABOVE ISSUES
APPLY TO MY PROPOSAL
X
X
X
X

UserMedia - School of Computing and Communications

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