We focus on knowledge and information management over large scale; our research covers three main areas:
- How to capture information over large scale (the Web, social media, distributed organisational archives, mobile devices, drones, sensors, etc.) with a particular focus on sensing using mobile phones
- How to use the captured information (e.g. for knowledge management, business intelligence, customer analysis, management of large scale events via social media, etc.) with a particular focus on data analytics
- How to communicate the information (to end users, problem owners, etc.) through visual analytics
Sensing over large scale
We specialise in sensing via mobile devices and low cost architectures (Arduino, Raspberry PI).
CitySense: we have created a human mobility tracking technology applications used by over 600,000 users in the UK and Europe. It is currently used by Public Health England for supporting governmental campaigns for health and well-being (Active 10). It is also used by three city councils in Europe to understand multi-modal mobility in large metropolitan areas. The City of Birmingham has recently adopted our technology to track their over 6,000 free bikes. It is used by the MoveMore initiative, a project that aims to make Sheffield the city in the UK that "moves more" by 2020. It is also used in the European project Seta to track mobility in three European cities (Birmingham, Santander and Turin).
EyesOnTheGround: a method for instant video communication for emergency responders. It enables turning any citizen camera into a camera for the emergency control room. The citizen receives a text message with a link. Clicking on the link will share the camera with the control room. The control room is able to communicate with the citizen via bidirectional audio, control the citizen's phone (switching between front and back camera), identifying the citizen's exact position via the phone's GPS, as well as recording the video interaction and taking screenshots and notes. This technology is now finding application in hospitals to support occupational therapists.
SeeingWithMyOwnEyes: a web tool to support visually impaired students during lectures (it provides easy real-time screen sharing between lecturer and student via a web browser).
Several other mobile technologies such as a noise detector, an OBDII tracker, etc.
THE Floow: we have created a spin-out company (The Floow Ltd) developing and commercialising technology for driver behaviour tracking. The Floow currently serves major insurers worldwide including DirectLine and AIG.
CitySense: we have created a human mobility tracking technology applications used by over 600,000 users in the UK and Europe. It is currently used by Public Health England for supporting governmental campaigns for health and well-being (Active 10). It is also used by three city councils in Europe to understand multi-modal mobility in large metropolitan areas. The City of Birmingham has recently adopted our technology to track their over 6,000 free bikes. It is used by the MoveMore initiative, a project that aims to make Sheffield the city in the UK that "moves more" by 2020. It is also used in the European project Seta to track mobility in three European cities (Birmingham, Santander and Turin).
EyesOnTheGround: a method for instant video communication for emergency responders. It enables turning any citizen camera into a camera for the emergency control room. The citizen receives a text message with a link. Clicking on the link will share the camera with the control room. The control room is able to communicate with the citizen via bidirectional audio, control the citizen's phone (switching between front and back camera), identifying the citizen's exact position via the phone's GPS, as well as recording the video interaction and taking screenshots and notes. This technology is now finding application in hospitals to support occupational therapists.
SeeingWithMyOwnEyes: a web tool to support visually impaired students during lectures (it provides easy real-time screen sharing between lecturer and student via a web browser).
Several other mobile technologies such as a noise detector, an OBDII tracker, etc.
THE Floow: we have created a spin-out company (The Floow Ltd) developing and commercialising technology for driver behaviour tracking. The Floow currently serves major insurers worldwide including DirectLine and AIG.
Social Media Analysis
An important part of our work concerns situation awareness on social media. We develop methods for large-scale information capture of structured and unstructured data. Particular focus on use for emergency response during natural catastrophes and social unrest.
We have developed the TRIDS framework for situation awareness in events using social media. It has been used by emergency control rooms in the UK and Europe to monitor and manage large events involving over a million people over two years, including for the largest music festivals in the world and the evacuation of 30,000 people from the city of Vicenza (Italy) to support the defuse of a World War II bomb.
Our technology has been adopted by Football Whispers, a startup providing predictions of football transfers across 36 leagues. Football Whispers has currently over 2.5 million individual visitors a month. Our system provides the data collection mechanism analysing over 70 million messages a month.
We have developed the TRIDS framework for situation awareness in events using social media. It has been used by emergency control rooms in the UK and Europe to monitor and manage large events involving over a million people over two years, including for the largest music festivals in the world and the evacuation of 30,000 people from the city of Vicenza (Italy) to support the defuse of a World War II bomb.
Our technology has been adopted by Football Whispers, a startup providing predictions of football transfers across 36 leagues. Football Whispers has currently over 2.5 million individual visitors a month. Our system provides the data collection mechanism analysing over 70 million messages a month.
Supporting large organisations
We develop methodologies to support organisations with management and reuse of their knowledge and data; highlights include:
- Overall coordination of the X-Media EU Project on large-scale knowledge management across media, €13.8m, 15 partners, £1m of follow-on investment by industrial partners, and three spin-out companies created
- Creation of models for large scale indexing and searching of distributed company archives
- Patented a terminology recognition system certified for Aerospace use, currently core to a Rolls-Royce knowledge management program in use by over 10,000 employees
- Creation of a spin-out company (K-Now Ltd) to commercialise our search and indexing technology
Medicine, Health and Wellbeing
An increasingly important area of research is medicine and well-being; we are developing a series of low cost technologies for:
- Allowing remote visits of homes and patients
- Tracking patients and users within and outside the home
- Semi-automated detection of eye conditions
- Way finding in complex infrastructures (e.g. hospitals) per staff and patients