Spheres of Influence II:

Geospatial and News Data Integration with a Camera-
Tracking Interface

IGERT Students

Date: Friday, June 2, 2006
Place: Humanities and Social Sciences, 1173
Time: 2:00 pm — 3:00 pm

Abstract:
The original Spheres of Influence project implemented a graphic visualization of the coverage of international video news feeds presented to users in a public interactive tiled display spanning four large screens. We propose to design and implement several extensions to the installation that will help users interpret the international coverage, which now consists of field reported video segments and the accompanying un-translated audio voiceover. We will display several additional kinds of related information� cartographically, graphically and textually�beginning with where on the globe the video feed is referring to. We will explore methods of visually representing the extent and intensity of the coverage of individual news stories, and the movement, or flow of coverage over time. The research challenges to be met in implementing these ideas include: extraction of verbal content from a given video feed, geo-referencing locations in the content of the feed, dynamically representing the estimated locations for every video feed, and implementing additional gesture recognition techniques to enhance display navigation possibilities. Finally, the news data obtained from the ongoing operation of the installation will be captured and maintained as a valuable source for which data mining methods may be employed to discover patterns in global information flow.

The SOI research group:
Joriz DeGuzman, Computer Science

Karl Grossner, Geography

Emily Moxley, ECE

Matt Peterson, Psychology

Alex Villacorta, Statistics

Anne-Marie Skriver, Art Studio

Marko Peljhan, MAT, Faculty Advisor

George Legrady, MAT, Faculty Advisor

B.S. Manjunath, ECE, Faculty Advisor