BOP - Making Sense of Space was a £1 million, two-year, multidisciplinary project, funded by the UK government’s Technology Strategy Board. It investigated how ubiquitous computing, using wireless sensor networks (WSN), could be used to create a better understanding of the creative workplace. The project ended in December last year but I am still finalising the last few *project management* items.

I have been asked by a few people to provide a summary of the project and what we learnt. A summary pdf was created for the final conference. Below are my thoughts.

What did we do? BOP gathered quantitative and qualitative data about the physical environment, the use of space and the mood of the work force. The WSN toolkit enabled the collecting, manipulating and displaying of both tangible environmental factors, for example, light levels, heat levels, noise levels and people’s presence, and workforce reports on intangible factors, such as perceptions of personal energy levels, sense of well-being, stress and feelings of connectedness with others. In practical terms this meant we deployed a 20 node WSN capturing environment data, activity based sensors and prototyped several different polling devices.

Crossbow WSN - light, temperature, pressure

Arduino based CO2 sensor

Arduino based activity sensors - presence at meeting tables

Beastie based activity sensors - ultrasounder to monitor corridor activity

Weigh your opinion - polling devices

Visualisation - ticker playing in entrance to office

Visualisation - intranet, screen based

Auralisation

Why do this? Organisations are potentially interested in space from three main perspectives: cost efficiency; employee performance; and brand image. Current measurement practice relies largely on hard-wired sensors, for monitoring of building services, and on manual clipboard surveys and/or online surveys for occupant feedback. Relative to these approaches, the toolkit offered several advantages, such as easier, cheaper data collection, more rapid analysis/presentation and the wherewithal to collect a broader set of data. In addition, the use of playful ‘front-ends’ offered the prospects of higher participation rates, hence more complete data sets, while the use of rapid visualisation techniques offered the prospect of a speedy feedback loop to building/office managers, line managers or the work groups themselves.

What did we learn? Here are my top three:
- The WSN technology worked but takes longer than acceptable to set up and use. Getting a network configured to reliably measure the data you want without intervention is not trivial.
- It is difficult to solicit qualitative environment information in an automated manner. Whilst the polling devices worked well I often found the data analysis sessions left me wishing we had measured more, or differently. I often doubted the scientific validity of the conclusions we reached.
- Presenting the sensory objects and data in a human readable manner increased peoples desire to participate / interact with an object. Sensing and monitoring should be a two way street. (maybe this is why self surveillance works)

Ubiquitous computing is still in its commercial infancy. BOP was the first project to use WSN to get a better understanding of the fit between built environments and the organisations and people who use them.

Other resources:
more photos on flickr
summary podcast with ppt slides
video of an IET presentation I made on this project

We have been working heads down for the past few months on a new EC FP7 project called SENSEI. The goal of SENSEI is to provide the real-time sensor and actuator dimension of next generation network and service infrastructures. Or as the project website puts it:

In order to realise the vision of Ambient Intelligence in a future network and service environment, heterogeneous wireless sensor and actuator networks (WS&AN) have to be integrated into a common framework of global scale and made available to services and applications via universal service interfaces. SENSEI creates an open, business driven architecture that fundamentally addresses the scalability problems for a large number of globally distributed WS&A devices. It provides necessary network and information management services to enable reliable and accurate context information retrieval and interaction with the physical environment. By adding mechanisms for accounting, security, privacy and trust it enables an open and secure market space for context-awareness and real world interaction.

The tangible outputs of the SENSEI project include:

1) plug and play architecture / protocol
2) open service interface
3) efficient WS&AN island solutions (targeting 5nJ/bit)
4) pan European test platform

Our focus has been on supporting the scenario development and hopefully over the next month or two I will post some the scenarios that we have been finding most interesting. The themes we have been focusing on include Smart City, Healthcare and Transport.

The project fits under Future Internet - ICT Challenge 1: Pervasive and Trusted Network and Service Infrastructures

The end of 2007 saw the final conference for the DTI Bop project. There has been a number of PR items around it including airtime on BBC Radio 5 (on the morning of the conference) and BBC Radio 4's Today programme. It also appeared in Design Week. The move into 2008 means the two DTI / TSB projects we have been working on applying wireless sensor networks within an office environment are coming to a close but two new projects are starting up.

The first is an EU FP7 project called SENSEI (evolved from EU FP6 project called e-Sense) looking at networks of wireless sensor networks. We are providing input to the scenarios and business requirements.

The second called ITOBO is with UCC and is funded by Science Foundation Ireland. Other partners include HSG, CYLON, Vector FM, and Intel. ITOBO will undertake research in Information and Communication Technology that will enable us to develop a holistic, methodological framework for life-cycle oriented information management and decision support in the construction and energy-management sectors. The domain-specific goal is to develop an anticipating (smart) building that operates on an energy efficient and user-friendly basis while reducing its maintenance costs. (More info for Arup staff is on the research wiki)

In Versaille at the European Construction Technology Platform (ECTP) conference. The ECTP has been created to establish a voice for the european constuction sector with the European Commission (EC) and in particular at the moment Framework 7 funding. The days were a mix of EC representative presentations, member presentations (from industry and academy) and a series of brokerage events around the 7 focus areas of the platform (networking opportunities to support the creation of collaborative projects). The focus areas are: innovative use of underground space, a living cultural heritage for an attractive Europe, ICT supported new integrated processes for the consturction sector, high added value construction materials, resource efficient and clean buildings, sustainable management of transport and utility networks, environment and quality of life for all. (Arup are coordinating the ICT processes focus area with VTT and facilitated the brokerage workshop in quite a bizarre room - Salle Lulli in the Palais des Congres)

The Strategic Research Agenda for ECTP is available for downloadable at http://www.ectp.org

The final ECTP road-map is due to be published to the EC in March but funding for FP7 starts in early 2007.

Presented the DTI Bop project at the event in a poster session for national technology programme projects. Other relevent posters are posted to flickr.

Notes from FP6 UK Information Society Technologies meeting at DTI conference centre 06.10.06 to launch the the ICT component of FP7 to UK audience.

The 7 themes for ICT in FP7

Introduced main features and proposed priorities for 2007-08. First ICT call in Jan/Feb 2007. Seven *challenges* are proposed each with several *target* areas for research:

1. network and service infrastructure (250 mil euro) (Sarah: items such as built in security and trust, full support of distributed value chains - SOA, computing as utility)

2. cognitive systems, robotics and interaction (450 mil euro) (Alvise, Tristan, Darren: looking at things like robots adapting to context, machines and systems that understand their users and/or their environments**, systems that understand multimedia and multi modal digital information)

3. components, systems, engineering (200 mil euro) (at electronic level - not for Arup)

4. digital libraries and content (400 mil euro) (Rebecca G, Tom, Tony, Kevin: mass-individualisation of learning experiences with ICT, efficient editing and knowledge management systems)

5. sustainable and personalised healthcare (175 mil euro) (Gavin, Phil: they mentioned computational modelling and simulation of organs as a specific objective, also met chap from Primal Pictures - http://www.primalpictures.com/ or http://www.anatomy.tv/)

6. mobility, environment, energy (180 mil euro) (David, Amanda: items included optimised traffic management, integrated management systems to monitor and react to environmental risks*)

7. ICT for independent living and inclusion (75 mil euro) (Rebecca M: ICT solutions that will substantially reduce the 30% of the population currently not using ICT, user friendly systems beyond the PC and current technologies**)

(For info i am interested in challenge 1: target = reconfigurability, adaptability, interoperability, service composition and challenge and those targets above marked with **)

Funding schemes

3 types of project:
A. Collaboration projects (STREPS - or IP)
B. Networks of excellence
C. Coordination and support actions

2100 mil total split as follows

1150 mil euro Jan 07 call - 1 stage submission (just long prop)
650 mil euro May 07 call - 2 stage submission (short then full)
200 mil euro Nov 07 call - 2 stage submission (short then full)

FET futures and emerging technologies open 65 mil euro over 2 years proactive 125 mil euro

fixed over head rate they use (where people cannot demonstrate their own ie SME's) is 60% (dropping to 40% for projects starting in 2009)

Rules for participation: minimum 3 different member states must be involved, big co's (Arup) get 50% funding for R&D and demonstrator type activity (Uni, public, SME's get 75%) and 100% funding for management activities.
Full details available in early 2007
Industry evaluators needed (call in november from site below) paid 450 (euro?) per day plus expenses.

more detail at http://fp6uk.ost.gov.uk/ if you register you will get notified of announcements, calls etc. and DW has ppt handouts from day for those who want to see them (just add a comment at bottom).

Application tips:

Evaluators have to read many of these - keep it simple, to the point, understandable on page one and then show why you are the dream team
Reference the ETP reports - especially the SRA's, strategic research agendas - since the technology programmes have been setup to influence the agenda of the FP7 programme (Arup are leading ECTP PICT - european construction technology platform, processing and ICT - this MUST be referenced for built environment projects) - http://cordis.europa.eu/ist/about/techn-platform.htm
Don't wait for call to start to pull together dream team since once call is made time is short...
Get advice from the UK National Contact Point (Peter Walters) - go talk to them and see what they think of your application.