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Over the last few years there has been an explosion in the importance of research and development in multimedia systems and their deployment over the Internet and WWW. However, these systems usually have limited interconnections among them; they may be viewed as virtual territories with very few existing facilities that can help users explore and retrieve relevant information. They apply to discrete data spaces only, failing to provide users with a means of continuous exploration in the related information space that often spans multiple data spaces. As a result, uninformed users may be lost or retracted from their intended destination if they can not describe a desired journey explicitly. Thus, there is a strong need to address this problem and to provide information guides that would allow a coherent exploration of information; an exploration that can be viewed as a structured journey in the information available.

At the moment, search engines are used to gather a list of potential interesting sites in an effort to solve this problem. Additionally, human intervention for the update of interconnections is often employed. Both approaches have major disadvantages. The required time and effort for manual update is both overwhelming and expensive while search-engines often respond with a large set of sites that are only peripherally related to the actual query. A great amount of research is being invested towards the creation of more powerful and intelligent search engines. Also, currently there is no association between the existing networking infrastructure and the query/response interaction. A link between them is expected to allow a more effective utilisation of the limited networking resources.

This project aims to tackle this problem from another viewpoint. A new conceptual model is suggested named the “Electronic Road”. This metaphor of an Electronic Road is a framework with which the available information can be explored following the paths the road forms. In effect, the Electronic Road creates an information map with spatial, temporal and context associations amongst the different information elements. A user who is interested in a specific topic would search the WWW for an appropriate Electronic Road rather than a query of relevant keywords. An Electronic Road provides users with a traversal of a meaningful set of related information sites with each user selecting a journey that suits their own interests and priorities in a dynamic way as they follow the road and discover new information that they judge useful. An Electronic Road can be developed incrementally by inserting and extending new paths and sites of information in the original map. Transparently to the user, the Electronic Road should be mapped onto the existing networking resources for their most effective utilisation.

The proposed facility would be particularly useful in educational applications in which typical users are able to identify their overall topic of interest, but they can not specify their interests in full a priori. More generally, an Electronic Road would be useful in other applications where it is essential to explore the available information according to preferences that are stimulated interactively during the actual process of exploration. A prototypical example of such a situation is the exploration of cultural information for education, entertainment or other reasons such as travel and tourism. These Electronic Roads will then allow users to make cultural information journeys.

This is particularly appropriate in the Euro-Mediterranean region with its rich cultural and historical ties. Here, Electronic Roads will allow us to interconnect in a non-trivial way a number of independent yet related multimedia applications existing in different places and countries of the region. Different social programs in education and training that exploit this new possibility are expected to contribute towards the establishment of Information Society in this region.

The approach in this project is intertwined around the definition and development of the Electronic Road metaphor. This will form the basics for the development of a distinguished, interactive multimedia framework whose first implementations will provide concrete prototypes of Electronic Roads in the Euro-Med region of the partners. Social and educational studies will be conducted in order to evaluate the potential impact of such development in the region. We therefore have three inter-related activities:

The first activity defines and designs the basic metaphor of an electronic road for the exploration of information, taking into account users' multi-lingual backgrounds as well as different user profiles. These metaphors will form the building blocks for using novel technologies such as multimedia, parallel and distributed computing, digital libraries and networking in the construction of distributed interactive multimedia frameworks. The second activity capitalizes on the results from the first activity to proceed to the actual implementation and installation of prototype Electronic Roads in the region. The third activity will serve the purpose of the project's exploitation and evaluation. This activity aims to study the added value of regional cultural roads with respect to various aspects of the Information Society.

Based on the above approach, the project is divided into the following workpackages.

Workpackages WP1 and WP2 define the multimedia basic research and technological advances that are required for the successful development of this application. WP3 and WP4 will implement and install the actual multimedia prototypes. WP5 consists of studies that will examine the educational and social impact of the proposed project on users groups from participating countries. Each workpackage is further analyzed into a series of tasks as explained below.

WP1.T2 Definition of the general concept of the Electronic Road metaphor.

WP1.T3 Identification of the basic components and their interrelations, along with lower level details such as the “abstract machine” of the model and required networking infrastructure.

WP1.T4 Identification of users' requirements and interfaces.

WP1.T5 Design of a high-level architecture for the Electronic Road prototype using the Joint Application Development (JAD) procedure for multimedia development.

WP3.T1 Design of user interface.

WP3.T2 Design of multi-lingual information retrieval models.

WP3.T3 Design of the software engineering infrastructure for amalgamating together the various components using coordination technologies and middleware philosophy.

WP3.T4 Design of a digital library functionality for multimedia data.

WP3.T5 Design of the networking and configuration protocols that are required for the transmittion and interchange of multimedia data.

The major challenges in this research stem from the required multi-lingual and diverse user profiles as well as the heterogeneity of existing multimedia systems that need to be interconnected. Technology-wise, issues concerning the diversity of methods, data representations and expertise employed at the participating multimedia applications need to be addressed. The problem can be addressed by applying WWW infrastructure and by customizing existing multimedia applications. Recent advances in telecommunications for high-speed transmission with high-density image compression for video help to make the implementation of such distributed systems more feasible. Issues concerning multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-ethnical aspects of end users require particular attention so that Electronic Roads provide comprehensive and smooth facilities to their users irrespective of their background. These needs will be addressed in the basic definition and design of the electronic road metaphor.

Six partners, denoted as P1 through P6 are allocated to different tasks as shown in the following table. The partner(s) responsible for each workpackage or subtask is outlined in bold. For the coordinator node (University of Cyprus), the individuals responsible for each subtask are also named. Milestones and deliverables are also shown in association with the corresponding tasks.

Tasks	Partners Involved	Deliverables	Milestones	Description of Deliverables
WP1.T1	P1,P2,P3,P5,P6	WP1.D1		Educational and pedagogical requirements of Electronic Roads.
WP1.T2	P1,P2,P4,P5	WP1.D2		Electronic Road Metaphor: Concepts and Innovations
WP1.T3	P1,P2,P3,P4	WP1.D3		An Electronic Road Requirements Analysis
WP1.T4	P1,P2,P3,P5	WP1.D4		Users Requirements and Interfaces
WP1.T5	P1,P2,P3,P4	WP1.D5		System’s Architecture
WP1	P1		WP1.M1	System Definition
WP2.T1	P1,P2,P3	WP2.D1		Analysis of Existing Systems
WP2.T2	P1,P2,P3,P4	WP2.D2		System’s Functional Description
WP2	P1		WP2.M1	System’s Analysis
WP3.T1	P2,P4,P5,P6	WP3.D1		User-Interface Development
WP3.T2	P2,P3, P4,P5	WP3.D2		Multi-lingual Retrieval Models
WP3.T3	P1,P2,P4	WP3.D3		Metacomputing Environment
WP3.T4	P1,P3,P4,P5	WP3.D4		Digital Library Framework
WP3.T5	P1,P2,P3,P4	WP3.D5		Networking Infrastructure
WP3	P1		WP3.M1	Detailed Design of Electronic Roads
WP4.T1	P1,P2,P3,P4	WP4.D1		Software Integration Infrastructure
WP4.T2	P1,P2,P3,P4	WP4.D2		Metadata-based interoperable environment
WP4.T3	P1,P3,P4	WP4.D3		Digital Library realisation
WP4.T4	P1,P2,P3,P4	WP4.D4		Networking and configuration protocols functionality
WP4	P1		WP4.M1	Prototype - Version 1
WP5.T1	P1,P2,P3,P5,P6	WP5.D1, WP5.D4		Evaluation of the model
WP5.T2	P1,P2,P3,P6	WP5.D2		Seminars introducing Electronic Roads for educational and cultural exploration
WP5.T3	P1,P2,P3,P5,P6	WP5.D3		Study on the social and political effects of Electronic Road exploration
WP5	P1		WP5.M1     WP5.M2	Papers on the educational, social and political effects of Electronic Road exploration in the greater EURO-MED region Prototype - Version 2

NOTE: For those tasks where there exist more than one responsible contact point (indicated above by having the id of the partners in question in bold), UCY is responsible for coordinating the activities to be performed, and the other partner is responsible for assembling the work done by the partners (i.e. individual reports, deliverables, etc.) and producing the overall deliverable or progress report.

The following results are expected to arise through the interdisciplinary research and other activities pertinent to the proposed project.

Furthermore, the following specific deliverables will be produced:

WP1.D1: Educational and Pedagogical Requirements

Study of the basic educational and pedagogical requirements of electronic roads and how they relate to the Mediterranean educational systems. Issues that will be covered involve teacher training, collaboration, communication, learning styles, multiple representation of ideas and assessment. The results will reveal aspects for an effective user interface and specific tools that will need to be available to the user in order to maximise the educational effectiveness of an electronic road system.

WP1.D2: Electronic Road Metaphor

Definition of the general framework of an electronic road as an interactive multimedia system and identification of the basic components.

WP1.D3: Requirements Analysis

Analysis of the objectives and requirements of such a system, in conjunction with the results of WP2.D1. Formal description of the model in JAD.

WP1.D4: Users’ Requirements and Interfaces

The needs for all types of users for such an interactive multimedia environment are examined and a detailed description of the system’s behaviour to the user is derived.

WP1.D5: System’s Architecture

Defines the overall structure of the proposed model.

WP1.M1: Electronic Roads System Definition

This is the combined report of deliverables WP1.D1, WP1.D2, WP1.D3, WP1.D4 and WP1.D5 which will describe the overall detailed definition of the proposed model.

WP2.D1: Data and Methods

Already existing multimedia environments that could be appropriate for the project’s aims will be analysed to derive the sets of data and methods that are usually involved in frameworks such as the one proposed in this project.

WP2.D2: System’s Functional Description

A detailed analysis of the system’s high-level and low-level functionality is presented with the aim of showing how issues of adaptability, presentation, distributed execution and optimisation, and networking are affecting the development of the model.

WP2.M1: System’s Analysis

This is the combined report of deliverables WP2.D1 and WP2.D2 which will describe the overall detailed analysis of the proposed model.

WP3.D1: User Interfaces

A detailed design of the system’s user interface will be presented that takes into consideration the users’ requirements and the proposed system’s functionality.

WP3.D2: Multilingual Issues

A detailed model will be presented with the aim of providing multilingual functionality of the system, including retrieval capabilities.

WP3.D3: Meta Computing Environment

A detailed design of a metacomputing environment will be presented, based on the programming-in-the-large approach for distributed systems, where a coordination model is used to hook together the various components of the system by means of well defined interfaces.

WP3.D4: Digital Library Design

The design of the digital library component will be presented showing how multimedia data can be located, accessed and retrieved.

WP3.D5: Networking Design

The design of the required networking infrastructure will be presented, including algorithms for communication, dynamic load distribution, etc.

WP3.M1: System’s Design

This is the combined report of deliverables WP3.D1, WP3.D2, WP3.D3, WP3.D4 and WP3.D5 which will describe the overall detailed design of every major component of the proposed model.

WP4.D1: Software Integration

This deliverable effectively presents the implementation of the design described in WP3.D3 using the coordination language MANIFOLD along with middleware environments such as CORBA.

WP4.D2: Metadata functionality

Here we use the power of metadata to enhance the metacomputing environment developed in the previous deliverable with intelligent, optimised retrieval of the multimedia data.

WP4.D3: Digital Library Implementation

The implementation of the digital library component is presented here with explicit support for capturing, compression and storage capabilities and intelligent information retrieval.

WP4.D4: Networking Implementation

The development of the required networking infrastructure will be presented, including algorithms for communication, dynamic load distribution and (re-)configuration, etc.

WP4.M1: Prototype - Version 1

This is the combined report of deliverables WP4.D1, WP4.D2, WP4.D3 and WP4.D4 which will describe the prototype implementation of every major component of the model. This report is accompanied by the first version of the prototype.

WP5.D1: Educational Evaluation

This study will report on the testing of the prototype in an authentic classroom environment. The pedagogical effectiveness of the resource system will be assessed through pre-tests and post-tests before and after a carefully controlled treatment.

WP5.D2: Seminars

This deliverable incorporates the educational and cultural programs material that will introduce the Electronic Road to multiple audiences in the participating countries. The educational material will be sequenced in a pedagogical manner and will undergo research-based training.

WP5.D3: Social and Political Analysis

The study of the wider social and political implications of using the prototype and the introduced metaphor of electronic roads in the Euro-Med region will be presented in this deliverable.

WP5.D4: General Evaluation

This report will present the findings of a thorough evaluation of the prototype, including needs for fine-tuning, modification and/or limited extension of the offered functionality.

WP5.M1: Application Report

This is the combined report of deliverables WP5.D1, WP5.D2, WP5.D3 and WP5.D4 which will describe in detail the different types of repercussions in using the prototype model.

WP5.M2: Prototype Version 2

This milestone is the second and final version of the prototype; in parallel with the activities that constitute WP4.M1 (version 1) there will also be feedback from D1 to D4 in this workpackage (WP5) in order to both further enhance the prototype with extra functionality but also fine tune it to the needs of the end-user.