Projects / Programmes
Future Internet collaboration platform
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 2.08.00 |
Engineering sciences and technologies |
Telecommunications |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| T180 |
Technological sciences |
Telecommunication engineering |
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 2.11 |
Engineering and Technology |
Other engineering and technologies |
collaboration platform, future internet, content distribution, security, usability
Researchers (7)
Organisations (2)
Abstract
Future Internet collaboration platforms are described as multi service platforms connected with other external infrastructures and applications (e.g. Content repositories, Social networking, Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS), User management, Content Delivery Networks, Authoring tools, etc.), which support synchronous and asynchronous cross domain human-centric collaboration. The development of Future Internet collaboration platforms are facing a series of research challenges that are particularly closely linked with the problems of personalized approach to the use of services, interoperability of included infrastructures, provision of adequate security and privacy of users, efficient distribution of large amounts of data, interoperability with different technologies (e.g. mobile technologies), etc.
The project will focus on the development of certain services that relate to solving the above mentioned problems and are in accordance with the guidelines of the development Future Internet collaboration platforms, such as development of novel usable graphical authentication mechanisms and flexible content access control mechanisms dedicated to be used by the new mobile devices and technologies for advanced collaboration services, development of skill and competence-based services which will improve efficiency and effectiveness of personalized content search, development of content distribution mechanisms which will contribute to the problem of effective distribution of content to end users. New solutions will be implemented into an existing videoconferencing platform VCC (Virtual Conference Centre), which was developed with partners in the European project GLOBAL. With the new services upgraded collaboration platform, would be evaluated and validated in a real environment with organizing several distributed virtual events (lectures, workshops, conferences), where participants will have the possibility of active participation.
Objectives of the project are in line with the professional activity of the industrial partner. They are aligned with their needs and market presence. The full implementation will allow the upgrading of their current services and commercial activity and will guarantee full competitiveness of the respective market. The results of the project will also contribute to greater recognition of Slovenia in the EU R&D activities on Future Internet, Collaborative Systems, Technology Enhanced Learning, and Trust & Security in the Information Society.
Significance for science
The project has addressed several important and challenging research problems that are part of the Future Internet Networks and Enterprise Systems scientific program and agenda as defined by the EC documents. Considering the nature of the project (general applied small research project) its importance for development of science has especially been in the development of new products based on the achievements that are beyond the state of the art as defined in the scientific agenda of Future Internet collaborative systems. The contributions include content distribution systems, user goal oriented search systems, and security solutions for advanced systems and networks. The project results have improved security solutions in design and development of graphical authentication systems. Graphical mechanisms have been thoroughly studied and improved through a number of experiments. The results show improvements in user friendliness, the mechanisms for security provision, and in the support of the security in mobile devices. Graphical passwords developed in the project can be more easily remembered and entered faster in the system. Brute-force attacks and guessing attacks were further mitigated. Proper selection of graphical elements and authentication mechanisms implementation have resulted in full support for the mobile devices used for Internet access. Additional work was performed for the content distribution security improvement by extended usage and application development of an access control protocol developed for P2P networks. This result shows that secure content distribution is possible even in network systems that previously didn't support such security services. User goal oriented search has been improved by competence and skill based labelling and search mechanisms. A competence scheme and skill levels have been developed for some areas of the economy studies. Mechanisms have been developed for labelling the content and recordings shared in the collaborative platform intended to be used by search engines. The results have enabled more efficient and successful search for targeted collaboration and selection of educational material accommodated to particular user needs. Content delivery has been improved in terms of scalability, robustness, bandwidth utilization and costs by using P2P network protocols. The platform developed has been enriched with content delivery management, monitoring and content metadata sharing mechanisms. In this way the P2P based content sharing has been made more appealing for commercial users such as the industrial project partner. The connector part of the platform as an integrating element developed in the project is confirming the hypothesis that it is possible to integrate previously separated building blocks for services into a unified and secure collaborative platform. The connector has enabled seamless and efficient integration of the services with a learning management system eCampus of the project partner and with the open source Moodle LMS. The new platform supports many use cases and new services. The platform was evaluated in the real working environment of the project partner and has proven the successful approach in its design and implementation.
Significance for the country
The project results are of most importance for the economy and society. As recent economical changes require more and more people to obtain new skills in a timely and effective manner, skill and competence-based services are becoming a critical factor for individuals, companies and other institutions. The project is contributing to the strengthening of the investment in human capital by providing effective and efficient skill and competence-based educational services, integrated in a collaborative platform. Security and privacy are crucial concerns of modern information and communication systems. Novel graphical authentication mechanisms have big market potential as they are applicable to any mobile device with a touch-screen interface, such as iPhone, Android OS based devices, iPad etc. Ability to use single European electronic identification and authentication services within the collaborative platform widens the potential of the project solutions to be more broadly used. Secure content distribution is a strong commercial stakeholder’s requirement. The requirement is fulfilled through an advanced network based access control for P2P networks that are used for content delivery and enabled in the developed platform. P2P-based content delivery provides great scalability and flexibility while supporting a broad range of delivery scenarios; the delivery technology choice can encourage the platform adoption especially among smaller service providers due to its cost effectiveness and large user groups support. The contribution provided by this research project is a part of the common European effort and commercial and societal ambitions in building the Internet of the Future, new competitive services on the market, and better economical and societal future of the country. The use cases developed and tested, and the integrated collaborative platform with advanced services evaluated in real working environment will allow the project commercial partner to enhance its service portfolio and to widen its commercial activity. This will improve the company competitiveness in the demanding and competitive market of e-learning and education. Apart from the project commercial partner other institutions have already expressed interest in the project results, for example Slovenian Public Employment Service organisation. The collaboration platform will be adapted to their use cases and requirements in the course of the newly obtained EU FP7 EmployID project.
Most important scientific results
Annual report
2011,
2012,
final report,
complete report on dLib.si
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
Annual report
2011,
2012,
final report,
complete report on dLib.si
