=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2235/paper11
|storemode=property
|title=ΓΑΒ LAB: The Knowledge and Uncertainty Research Laboratory at the University of Peloponnese
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2235/paper11.pdf
|volume=Vol-2235
|authors=Manolis Wallace,Vassilis Poulopoulos
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/euromed/WallaceP18
}}
==ΓΑΒ LAB: The Knowledge and Uncertainty Research Laboratory at the University of Peloponnese==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2235/paper11.pdf
LAB: The Knowledge and Uncertainty
Research Laboratory at the University of
Peloponnese
Manolis Wallace and Vassilis Poulopoulos
Knowledge and Uncertainty Research Laboratory
University of the Peloponnese, Tripolis, Greece 221 31
{wallace, vacilos}@uop.gr
http://gav.uop.gr
Abstract. Founded in 2014 and formally established in 2017, the Knowl-
edge and Uncertainty Research Laboratory examines the role of knowl-
edge and of its absence in the theory and application of information
technology. Our main theoretical tools are fuzzy mathematics and the
semantic web, while fields such as information visualization, artificial
intelligence, information retrieval, adaptation to the user, cultural infor-
matics, social networks and smart cities also have an important role in
the teams research. The laboratory is unconventional, in the sense that
it deviates from the typical notion of research laboratory and follows a
more open approach.
Keywords: knowledge · uncertainty · research laboratory · cultural in-
formatics · semantic web · artificial intelligence
1 Short description
LAB is a research laboratory, established at the Department of Informat-
ics and Telecommunications of the University of Peloponnese. It comprises more
than 40 members, including professors, researchers, doctoral candidates, post-
graduate and undergraduate students, laboratory staff and volunteers.
The character of the Laboratory is highly unconventional and interdisci-
plinary, with the research interests of its professors and researchers embracing
various fields of computer science as well as psychology, pedagogy, archeology
and history and cooperations spanning from research groups to private and pub-
lic entities of various domains.
Given the number of members and the variety of their research interests, it
follows naturally that LAB pursues a wide range of research (and other)
goals. Still, cultural informatics, or more specifically the utilization of technology
towards better understanding and accessing our cultural heritage, is the leading
and core field of work.
Cultural Informatics 2018, November 3, 2018, Nicosia, Cyprus. Copyright held by
the authors.
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2 Wallace and Poulopoulos
Fig. 1: The LAB logo
Fig. 2: A meeting with regional stakeholders of culture
2 Overview
LAB is a research lab that primarily focuses on the application of technol-
ogy in the area of broader area of cultural heritage. We participate in a number of
related projects, but also pursue independent research goals regardless of fund-
ing; often as part of graduate, doctoral and post-doctoral studies. Most research
efforts evolve around the topics of
– mobile applications for the contact-less exchange of data between exhibits
and visitors,
– VR and AR applications that enrich the museum experience,
– applications that gather data and visualize information regarding a museum
tour or exhibition experience, and
– the role of big data and social media in cultural informatics.
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Title Suppressed Due to Excessive Length 3
Research efforts outside cultural informatics include smart cities, citation
analysis, education and the handling of uncertainty. Of course, it is not uncom-
mon for these research efforts to at times find common ground or application in
the cultural domain as well.
Some of our recent and ongoing projects in the area of cultural informatics
include:
2.1 CrossCult
“CROSSCULT: Empowering reuse of digital cultural heritage in context-aware
crosscuts of European history” is an H2020 project that aims to make re-
flective history a reality in the European cultural context, by enabling the
re-interpretation of European (hi)stories through cross-border interconnections
among cultural digital resources, citizen viewpoints and physical venues.
The project has two main goals. The first goal is to lower cultural EU bar-
riers and create unique cross-border perspectives, by connecting existing digital
historical resources and by creating new ones through the participation of the
public. The second goal is to provide long-lasting experiences of social learn-
ing and entertainment that will help towards the better understanding and re-
interpretation of European history.
2.2 Kalamata 1821
“Kalamata 1821: Roads of Freedom” is a national project that aims to study and
exhibit to the wider public important local parameters of the 1821 era and their
interconnections with the present through roads of history, culture and trade.
Emphasis will be given to specific aspects of the 1821 revolution beginning in
Kalamata, with important historic significance and strong interrelation with
the wider area (e.g. preparation for the uprising, economic life of the region,
beginning of the revolution, Navarino naval battle), in order to describe the 200
years of history and the historic correlations.
By using new vision and multimedia technologies, it will be attempted to
interactively depict the historic moments to the citizens/visitors of Kalamata,
on a permanent basis. Through the multimedia platform that will be created,
the interested person will not only be able to be informed of the historic events,
but also, he/she will be motivated to move to several locations of interest in the
city or the area (geo-monuments), to ’live and feel’ the life style of the era and
to participate in the interactive games that will be developed.
2.3 exhiSTORY
In this work we examine how opportunities arising from technological advances
in the fields of IoT and semantics can be used to develop smart, self-organizing
exhibits that cooperate with each other and provide visitors with comprehensi-
ble, rich, diverse, personalized and highly stimulating experiences. These notions
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are included in the design of a system named “exhiSTORY”, which also exploits
previously ignored information and identifies previously unseen semantic links.
We present the architecture of the system and discuss its application potential.
2.4 Tripmentor
“Tripmentor: interactive tourist guide” is a national project that concerns the de-
velopment of a bilingual service (English, Greek) in the form of a web-interactive
platform/ application that will provide a personalized, integrated and unique
travel experience to the visitor of the Attica region. Alternative map routes will
be proposed to the traveler connected to the app for recreational purposes, in-
cluding stops at the selected points of interest with real time information on
cultural, recreational and athletic events. Suggestions and relative recreational
proposals will match the traveler’s preferences. Each route includes stops that
have meaningful, cultural, chronological or thematic relevance to each other, op-
timum duration of visit, optimal way of travel and total duration of the journey,
creating personalized narration- storytelling and incorporating gamification ele-
ments, depending on the characteristics of the visitor and the weighting of her/
his personal interests.
For foreigners, non having prior knowledge of the entertainment- artistic-
cultural- sporting ecosystem of the region and of Greece in general, and ac-
counting for the fact that the relevant information is mainly communicated in
Greek by the relative media (websites, events in social media, etc.), it is al-
most impossible for them to match their preferences with the numerous and
varied events offered in the Attica. The Tripmentor platform aims to fill the
gap of easy-to-access and systematic touristic information availability, creating
relevant narrative routes that fit to the preferences of each visitor.
2.5 PaloAnalytics
“PaloAnalytics: A platform for large-scale analysis of web mentions, in a multi-
lingual context, for identification of business opportunities” is a national project
that aims to develop a platform that will allow international companies to man-
age their reputation and compare it with the competitors. It will also allow them
to investigate the impact of their products on consumers across different coun-
tries and this will be achieved with the analysis of content from sites, blogs,
social networks and open data. The developed services will allow companies to
identify both positive and negative comments and reports about their brand
name and products and the individual features that formed the public opinion.
The project partners will explore, design and develop a range of algorithms
and tools: 1) to collect and manage large amounts of data (text, multimedia
and links) from online news sources, social networks and open sources, 2) to ex-
tract knowledge from textual references e.g. emotions, trends, influences, impact,
results and interactions in a multilingual environment, 3) to link exported knowl-
edge together and present it using infographics and user friendly visualisations.
The collaborating research organizations will design and exploit state-of-the-art
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Title Suppressed Due to Excessive Length 5
technologies in the fields of data mining, deep-learning and social networking
analysis and will give PaloAnalytics the competitive advantage over its interna-
tional competitors.
Other activities
In addition to the research efforts, LAB performs a series of student-centric,
pupil-centril and citizen-centric actions, in an effort to bring research and science
closer to the public and contribute more to its surrounding community. These
actions range from “open day” events and seminars for students to educational
visits for schools and from the organization of innovation competitions to the
development of a network of innovation centers for the general public.
Given that this is our core expertise, culture and cultural informatics have a
central role in these side activities, as they typically form the basis upon which
the following discussion is built and provide the working tools.
3 Partnership
We believe that a lot can be gained by combining expertise and examining
different points of view. Thus, in every domain that we are energized we strive to
partner with the people, institutions and stakeholders that are the most relevant,
so that we can exchange know-how and combine efforts. Some of our long lasting
partnerships are listed bellow, while more partnerships are currently being set
up or have been established recently.
3.1 Ephorate of Antiquities
Our partnership with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Arcadia is central to our
research in cultural informatics. It allows us to have access to real museums,
of different volumes, budgets and types, as well as insight regarding the way
archaeologists and museologists see their field and the challenges they face.
Through this partnership our students get to work on theses that are not
only considered from a theoretical point of view but are also applied and tested
in a real life setting.
3.2 Regional Directorate for Education
We strongly believe that, whilst administratively three distinct levels exist, in
essence education is one. We aim to work closely with primary and secondary
education schools, providing insight regarding what university really is and what
pupils should expect to find there or get from it. We also invest a lot of effort
towards stimulating pupils towards science and innovation.
Our partnership with the Regional Directorate for Primary and Secondary
Education of Peloponnese gives us access to a huge number of schoos and pupils.
It also brings us closer to the educators, facilitating our research in education and
educational software systems, as we have the opportunity to see and incorporate
the teacher’s view and insight already from the phase of theoretical design.
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3.3 City of Tripolis
One of the laboratory’s research topics is that of smart cities. Of course there is
little point in researching smart cities without having a city whose point of view
to examine and on which to apply the results of the research. Our partnership
with the municipality of Tripolis allows us to focus on research for smart cities
of small budget and limited existing infrastructure; an niche that has received
little attention so far, but can be expected to come to focus in the future as it
relates to the majority of cities in the world.
3.4 Innovation center
We believe that a university offers the most when it is not secluded away from
society but rather in close connection with it. In this direction, we are developing
a network of innovation centers throughout the region of Peloponnese.
The goal of these centers is to serve as the connecting point between the
laboratory and the society. The place where citizens can come asking for solutions
to practical problems, businesses can come looking for marketable innovations
and hopeful startup-ers can come for consulting and support.
3.5 HCI-VR laboratory
The The Human Computer Interaction and Virtual Reality Lab [1] of the Uni-
versity of Peloponnese is our sister laboratory. We share resources, projects and
occasionally members. We have similar goals, particularly in the direction of cul-
tural informatics, and we find we achieve much more when combining powers.
3.6 LAIQDA laboratory
LAIQDA is a research laboratory of the Technological Educational Institute
(TEI) of Peloponnese, located in Kalamata. Kalamata is another city in the
perfecture of Peloponnese that has an extremely rich history and culture.
Through our cooperation with LAIQDA we have workspace and colleagues in
Kalamata, as well as direct access to the local stakeholders and authorities. As
there is talk of joining the TEI of Peloponnese and the University of Peloponnese
in the near future, there is even a possibility of the two laboratories merging into
one.
3.7 Laboratory of Archaeometry
The Laboratory of Archaeometry (established in 2007, in operation since 2010)
is based at the Department of History, Archaeology and Cultural Resources
Management, University of the Peloponnese in the city of Kalamata.
This is the other laboratory of the University of the Peloponnese that works
in the broader area of culture. Via our collaboration we can approach projects
with a more holistic perspective, combining the points of view of engineering
and humanities.
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Title Suppressed Due to Excessive Length 7
4 Lessons learned
Whereas the senior members of the lab all have experiences from the more “con-
ventional” way of operation of research laboratories, at LAB we have opted
to follow a different, highly unconventional approach. Core areas of differentia-
tion from the norm include:
– Involving undergraduate students in large numbers in the core operation of
the laboratory, even the research related tasks.
– Establishing and investing in collaborations with non-research organizations.
– Directing laboratory resources towards popularization of science, both for
schools and the broader public.
– Sharing findings and tools rather than following the typical path of patenting
and financial exploitation.
Our main finding is that the “open” laboratory works, in the long run.
Involving undergraduate students in the research process requires consider-
ably more time and effort from the part of the senior researchers to achieve the
same goals. Thus, we would not recommend it as a short term approach. But, in
the long term, this works wonders for the development of the students, not only
as regards their technical know-how but also with regards to their confidence
and ability to develop initiative and contribute more to research in the future.
We have found that it also makes it easier to have many and capable senior
students; this is typically an area in which our regional university is lacking.
Involving stakeholders and non-researchers early in the research process also
requires time and effort from the part of researchers, and often leads to great
delays as when a common ground and language cannot be found they need
to be developed from scratch. But in the long run, this creates a network of
people that provide valuable and previously unavailable insight into what would
be useful, what might work, what limitations and special conditions need to be
taken into consideration. We find that being truly interdisciplinary, i.e. involving
people with a common interest but vastly different backgrounds, is the only way
to move forward in a field such as cultural informatics. The combination of
different backgrounds, we should point out, does not refer to the cooperation
between researchers of different scientists - in the end all are researchers; it
refers to the vivid discussion between researchers, entrepreneurs, practitioners,
NGOs, public bodies and the general public.
5 Open challenges
The unconventional nature of the laboratory is both its strength and its weak-
ness. Whilst the open approach contributes technically to achieving our goals,
it makes funding the pursuit of these goals harder. Available funding schemes
are designed to support the typical operation of research entities. Thus, when a
research entity hopes to venture to new, atypical operations, no funding schemes
are available to support it.
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Our main challenge is how to continue supporting actions such as working
with primary and secondary schools, and fund efforts such as the network of
innovation centers, through our income generating operations such as the par-
ticipation in RTD projects, in a more sustainable and extensible way.
With respect to research in cultural informatics, the challenges that we are
currently working on include the documentation and re-utilization of the nar-
ratives of museum visits[2], the rapid personalization of museum guide software
based on information gathered from social media[3], the utilization of IoT tech-
nologies for smart cultural venues[4], the use of low end devices for high end
experiences[5] and finding the optimal balance between entertainment and edu-
cation in software for educational visits to venues of cultural interest.
6 Tools
The lab’s policy is to make all applications and code freely available, as soon
as technically and legally possible - limitations may be in place for components
developed cooperatively in the framework of joint projects.
(a) The Uncertain Tag Cloud (b) Impact Analyzer interface
(c) Google Scholar Retrieval interface (d) Sort My Pictures interface
Fig. 3: Tools
The list of tools includes a. Tate Analyzer, b. The Uncertain Tag Cloud, c.
Impact assessment and visualization and d. Citation retrieval.
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Title Suppressed Due to Excessive Length 9
Tate Analyzer tool processes and analyzes metadata from Tate Gallery’s col-
lection https://github.com/tategallery/collection in order to find “hid-
den” interconnections between the objects of the collection. The too produces
clusters of similar objects based on ontological information. The tool’s key con-
cepts as well as its practical application are discussed in [4]. The tool and its
code are freely available under a CC0 1.0 Universal license. The Uncertain Tag
Cloud - a Java based application - provides a user friendly user interface through
which a user can easily specify and develop tag clouds. The application is based
on the Kumo library, which it extends with the addition of support for the notion
of uncertainty. It implements the concepts discussed in [6]. The application and
its code are freely available under a GPLv3 license. Impact assessment and vi-
sualization implements the concepts discussed in [7]. It accepts as input a list of
publications in an XML file (as exported by our citation retrieval software) and,
by examining the publication media, estimates the sciences and scientific fields
they are related to. It’s intended use is to process lists of citations in order to
estimate a researcher’s impact in different fields of science; other uses are easy
to envisage. The application and its code are freely available under a GPLv3
license. Finall, “Citation retrieval” retrieves the complete list of an author’s ci-
tations from the Google scholar database. It works by simulating a human user
(sending HTML queries and parsing the resulting pages). Self-citations are iden-
tified and tagged and full results are conveniently exported in XML format.
The application and its code are freely available under a GPLv3 license. People
who take large numbers of digital pictures know how hard it is to keep them
organized, so that they can be retrieved at will. This Java based application pro-
cesses EXIF, IPTC and XMP in order to organize photos in folders. Users can
use a predefined organization method or design their own through an intuitive
interface. An interesting feature is the use of location information, recorded and
stored together with the photos taken by most modern devices, in order to tag
the photo with the location in which it was taken. The application and its code
are freely available under a GPLv3 license.
7 Contact
We strongly believe in partnerships and we will be happy to hear from anyone
interested in joining forces and pursuing common goals. You can reach us at:
– Email: gav@uop.gr
– Web: http://gav.uop.gr
– Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/gavlab
To meet us in person and visit our facilities, you will find us at the campus
of the University of Peloponnese, in Tripolis, at:
LAB - Knowledge and Uncertainty Research Laboratory
Department of Informatics and Telecommunications
University of the Peloponnese
102
10 Wallace and Poulopoulos
Akadimaikou G. K. Vlachou str
22 131 Tripolis
GREECE
Or you can altogether skip talking to us and get our tools and code directly
from GitHub.
– GitHub: http://github.com/gavlab-gr
Acknowledgment
This work has been partially funded by the project CrossCult: Empowering
reuse of digital cultural heritage in context-aware crosscuts of European history,
funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program,
Grant#693150
References
1. A. Antoniou, C. Vassilakis, A. Theodoropoulos and G. Lepouras, The Human Com-
puter Interaction and Virtual Reality Lab (University of Peloponnese): overview and
current challenges, Cultural informatics research and applications: State of the art
and open challenges, Nicossia, Cyprus, 2018
2. I. Bourlakos, M. Wallace, A. Antoniou, C. Vassilakis, G. Lepouras and A.V. Kara-
panagiotou, Formalization and visualization of the narrative for museum guides, 3rd
International KEYSTONE Conference (IKC 2017), Gdask, Poland, 11-12 September
2017.
3. Costas Vassilakis, Angeliki Antoniou, George Lepouras, Vassilis Poulopoulos, Mano-
lis Wallace, Stavroula Bampatzia and Ioannis Bourlakos, Stimulation of Reflection
and Discussion in Museum Visits through the Use of Social Media, Social Network
Analysis and Mining, 7:40, December 2017.
4. C. Vassilakis, V. Poulopoulos, A. Antoniou, M. Wallace, G. Lepouras and M. Lopez
Nores, exhiSTORY: Smart Exhibits That Tell Their Own Stories, Future Generation
Computer Systems, in press. The final paper will be available at ScienceDirect.
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G. Lepouras, C. Vassilakis, N. Platis, Personalized Augmented Reality Experiences
in Museums using Google Cardboards, 12th International Workshop on Semantic
and Social Media Adaptation and Personalization (SMAP 2017), July 9-10, 2017,
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national Workshop on Semantic and Social Media Adaptation and Personalization,
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7. M. Wallace, Extracting and visualizing research impact semantics , Proceedings
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Personalization, Corfu, Greece, 2014.
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