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Data provenance standardisation [DPS]

Summary of the impact

KCL research played an essential role in the development of data provenance standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards body for web technologies, which is responsible for HTTP, HTML, etc. The provenance of data concerns records of the processes by which data was produced, by whom, from what other data, and similar metadata. The standards directly impact on practitioners and professional services through adoption by commercial, governmental and other bodies, such as Oracle, IBM, and Nasa, in handling computational records of the provenance of data.

Submitting Institution

King's College London

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Mathematical Sciences: Statistics
Information and Computing Sciences: Computer Software, Information Systems

Development of model-driven software methods that support knowledge-based, process-driven (mobile) service oriented architectures

Summary of the impact

This case study reports the impact on businesses and practitioners of model-driven software architecture research, workflow-based application development, and intelligent computing through a series of connected JISC, Knowledge Connect projects, and, especially, Knowledge Transfer Partnerships.

Key impacts for software companies, related to their software development processes and products, include the adoption of the model-driven architecture approach, showing:

  • Improved software development processes for workflow-based and mobile applications.
  • Early adoption of software product lines (SPLs).

Integration of intelligent computing in the form of data mining and decision support in software processes and products.

Submitting Institution

University of West London

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing, Computer Software, Information Systems

Facilitating System Evolution during Design and Implementation: CRISTAL

Summary of the impact

The volume and diversity of data that companies need to handle are increasing exponentially. In order to compete effectively and ensure companies' commercial sustainability, it is becoming crucial to achieve robust traceability in both their data and the evolving designs of their systems. The CRISTAL software addresses this. It was originally developed at CERN, with substantial contributions from UWE Bristol, for one of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments, and has been transferred into the commercial world. Companies have been able to demonstrate increased agility, generate additional revenue, and improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness with which they develop and implement systems in various areas, including business process management (BPM), healthcare and accounting applications. CRISTAL's ability to manage data and their provenance at the terabyte scale, with full traceability over extended timescales, based on its description-driven approach, has provided the adaptability required to future proof dynamically evolving software for these businesses.

This case study embodies a non-linear relationship between underpinning research, software development and deployment. It involves computer science research at UWE in conjunction with its applied development for the world's largest particle physics laboratory and onward deployment commercially into private sector industry.

Submitting Institution

University of the West of England, Bristol

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Computation Theory and Mathematics, Computer Software, Information Systems

UltraSoC: Commercialisation of a novel debug support architecture for multi-processor systems on a chip

Summary of the impact

From 2005, a body of research undertaken at the University of Essex has developed a novel debug support architecture for systems on a chip (SoC). This platform successfully addresses the challenge of debugging applications executing on SoCs with multiple processor cores. A system-centric architecture is used, which achieves substantial improvement in compression and requires dramatically less silicon real estate than existing state of the art applications. The research underpins `UltraDebug', which is commercialised via the spin-out `UltraSoC'. UltraSoC has attracted investment worth £5million (the majority coming from venture capital sources) and is currently working with PMC-Sierra to incorporate its innovative technology into PMC's next generation of storage controllers.

Submitting Institution

University of Essex

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Computation Theory and Mathematics, Computer Software
Technology: Computer Hardware

1) Data2Text

Summary of the impact

Data-to-text utilises Natural Language Generation (NLG) technology that allows computer systems to generate narrative summaries of complex data sets. These can be used by experts, professional and managers to better, and quickly, understand the information contained within large and complex data sets. The technology has been developed since 2000 by Prof Reiter and Dr Sripada at the University of Aberdeen, supported by several EPSRC grants. The Impact from the research has two dimensions.

As economic impact, a spinout company, Data2Text (www.data2text.com), was created in late 2009 to commercialise the research. As of May 2013, Data2Text had 14 employees. Much of Data2Text's work is collaborative with another UK company, Arria NLG (www.arria.com), which as of May 2013 had about 25 employees, most of whom were involved in collaborative projects with Data2Text.

As impact on practitioners and professional services, case studies have been developed in the oil & gas sector, in weather forecasting, and in healthcare, where NLG provides tools to rapidly develop narrative reports to facilitate planning and decision making, introducing benefits in terms of improved access to information and resultant cost and/or time savings. In addition the research led to the creation of simplenlg (http://simplenlg.googlecode.com/), an open-source software package which performs some basic natural language generation tasks. The simplenlg package is used by several companies, including Agfa, Nuance and Siemens as well as Data2Text and Arria NLG.

Submitting Institution

University of Aberdeen

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
Language, Communication and Culture: Linguistics

Case Study 5: Knowledge Management Technology for Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Industries (InforSense)

Summary of the impact

The research in this case study has pioneered knowledge management technology. It has had major impact on drug discovery and translational medicine and is widely adopted in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. The impacts are:

  1. The formation of InforSense to commercialise the technology. The company had 150 employees in June 2009 when it merged with IDBS Ltd to create the world's second largest life science informatics company.
  2. The results from knowledge management technology and associated software platform have enabled the integration of molecular, imaging, clinical data and analytics, to identify biomarkers for disease identification, treatment selection and side effect prediction.
  3. Since 2002 the technology has been deployed by major pharmaceutical companies (including GSK, AZ, Roche, Pfizer, Bayer and Boehringer Ingelheim) and leading healthcare institutions e.g. Mayo Clinic, Harvard Medical School and King's Health Partners, generating significant social, health and economic impact.

Submitting Institution

Imperial College London

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Computation Theory and Mathematics, Distributed Computing, Information Systems

Establishing a blueprint for administrative data based longitudinal studies in the UK

Summary of the impact

The Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS) is a pioneering study, combining census, civil registration, health and education data (administrative data). It has established an approach that allows the legal and ethical use of personal, sensitive information by maintaining anonymity within the data system. This approach has become a model for the national data linkage systems that are now being established across the UK. The SLS has also enabled policy analysts to monitor key characteristics of the Scottish population in particular health inequalities (alerting policy makers to Scotland's poor position within Europe), migration (aiding economic planning) and changing tenure patterns (informing house building decisions). Finally, the study has become fully embedded in Scotland's National Statistical agency, allowing it to produce new informative statistical series.

Submitting Institution

University of St Andrews

Unit of Assessment

Geography, Environmental Studies and Archaeology

Summary Impact Type

Political

Research Subject Area(s)

Mathematical Sciences: Statistics
Medical and Health Sciences: Public Health and Health Services
Economics: Applied Economics

Grid Computing

Summary of the impact

Grid computing research conducted by the High Energy Physics (HEP) Group at the University of Cambridge, Department of Physics has enabled software company IMENSE to develop and commercialise a range of content based image recognition products. The research gained substantial media interest and was featured at the BA Festival of Science 2008.

Submitting Institution

University of Cambridge

Unit of Assessment

Physics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Computation Theory and Mathematics, Computer Software, Information Systems

A new product for creating annotated data sets within smart environments

Summary of the impact

[text removed for publication], a developer of high-precision medical devices, have produced a new data annotation tool ([text removed for publication]) based on research in CSRI on data storage formats and activity recognition for applications within smart home environments. Within [text removed for publication] stereo-based cameras record activities in a specified environment (e.g. kitchen) which are then annotated using user-based pre-configured activity labels (e.g. prepare meal, wash dishes). [text removed for publication] is currently used by [text removed for publication] users and has yielded additional sales worth [text removed for publication]. [text removed for publication] have employed [text removed for publication] additional technical development staff to extend [text removed for publication] functionality, and through an MoU [text removed for publication] now supports automated annotation based on CSRI's research on activity recognition.

Submitting Institution

University of Ulster

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing, Information Systems

Database migration and data conversion for improved, consistent and integrated address database for the Government of Gibraltar

Summary of the impact

The UoA research enabled a step increase in the technical and commercial capabilities of Atlantic Geomatics (UK) Ltd (AGUK, Cumbria) and the development of a postal addressing solution for the Government of Gibraltar (GoG). The beneficiaries and benefits included: AGUK who secured a contract safeguarding jobs and opening new international markets. Moreover, the GoG now have a definitive solution for legislation to replace their manual, multiple and inconsistent address lists by a spatially-based official address register (OAR) incorporating geographical information thereby enabling the people of Gibraltar to receive enhanced services (e.g. postal, emergency, utilities) from a centrally managed OAR.

Submitting Institution

Northumbria University Newcastle

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing, Data Format, Information Systems

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