KEY ACTION 3: MULTIMEDIA CONTENT AND TOOLS

1: Efficient authoring and design for creative content in knowledge and media publishing
2: Content Personalisation
3: Instructional Management Systems and Reusable Learning Material
4: Advanced Learning Environments
5: Re-engineering Life-Long Learning through ICT
6: Digital Representation and Preservation of Cultural Artifacts
7: Full Multilinguality
8: New forms of Content
9: Content assets management and access
10: Active Content
11: Analysis, indexing, retrieval and filtering for visual, auditory and numerical media
12: Information representation, visualisation and navigation
13: Natural Interactivity
14: Media Representations, Models and Standards

Rationale for action lines in Key Action 3:

The Multimedia Content and Tools key action must fulfil a double role:

Enabling European players of publishing, media, information services, digital libraries, education and training to innovate and re-engineer themselves for global competition and for delivering high quality contents and services to European citizens.

Enabling innovation of a generic nature on the content tools and technologies that can be used by users to locate, access, use, create and share information.

The success of the key action will in a large part rest on its ability to pursue these 2 aims with sufficient synergy, circulation of requirements and motivations, adaptation and take-up of creative technology. It is to make this synergy possible, while at the same time offering clear entry points to all types of players (including emergent players), that 3 different types of action lines are proposed, covering the scope of the key action description in the specific programme working document:

Vertical sectorial action lines: clear entry points for sectorial constituencies, reflecting the necessity to focus resources and to address specific requirements.

Cross-sectorial action lines: bringing together the various application constituencies (including new emerging players) and their ICT partners around a common objective or problem which can be addressed by integrating enabling technologies. Projects may be in one application domain. The horizontal dimension is at the call/cluster level.

Horizontal lines: enabling technologies developed within the key action (with participation of potential users to requirements, validation, and take-up), also leading to their own exploitation routes, and co-ordinated with complementary activities in other Key Actions.

1: Efficient authoring and design for creative content in knowledge and media publishing

RTD objective(s):

This action line will focus on integration of innovative authoring and design solutions within the processes of content production and delivery and RTD needed to achieve such integration:

• Time-efficient, real-time and co-operative design and authoring of contents
• Authoring for several media or delivery mechanisms
• Authoring for several languages and cultures

It will in particular enable innovative applications in media publishers and content service providers to integrate functions such as archive, real-time production facilities, author and design teams, delivery and marketing services.

Scope: All types of media, publishing and content information services

Expected RTD results: Projects supported in this action line would produce:

• Process innovations and enhancements leading to improved productivity and enlarged markets
• Ability for media publishers to extend their activities to new information services through multi-target content production, including contents that "scale" to adapt to different bandwidth or presentation devices
• Environments and best practice for skill acquisition in new content design technologies

A particular emphasis would be put on the openness and the transferability of the solutions developed for integration.

Main type of actions

The action line would combine two types of projects:

1. RTD projects aiming at developing tool kits and integration software,
2. Pilot projects aiming at testing new processes, supporting transfer of the associated practice and construct skill acquisition environments related to the new processes

The 2 activities will be conducted in parallel, the latter building up on available integration technologies at the time of the call.

Specific evaluation criteria

Expected call dates 1999

Annotations

Economic and societal benefits

The competitiveness of the European content industries relies on their ability to address the challenges of content globalisation, of time-constrained content production, and of the growing multiplicity of delivery channels. In the various content sectors co-ordination and networking of interoperable solutions is already a major objective, but the lack of proven on the ground, open and adaptable solutions make it difficult to reach this objective.

Need to be undertaken at European level

Very often, solutions developed by one particular content industry player or within a given member state are too influenced by the specificity of one type of operation or National infrastructure. Co-operative European research - in particular at sectorial level - can overcome these obstacles, and help bring efforts that are conducted by industry players to the level needed for global competitiveness.

Monitorable objectives and how to monitor them

It is expected that the action line would make possible within 3 or 4 years:

• The operation of several European-wide ⁽¹⁾ content production virtual networks with ability to jointly access material, produce in real-time co-operation and jointly exploit across media and language or National barriers
• Measurable gains in the production processes for existing types of contents, the exact extent of which can only be precised by future proposals
• An average turnover per produced content unit increased by at least 50% for the content providers participating in such integration

Other specifications or restrictions for the call

Links with other action lines

This action line needs to be co-ordinated with action lines

• (2) Personalising contents,
• (9) Contents asset management and access,

and Key action 2 (interface with IPR management systems).

Relevant fiches and other background

303, 320, 378, 403, 578

See also SP first RTD priority in the first bullet point, and background documents from the various consultation workshops organised by DGXIII/E

2: Content Personalisation

RTD objective(s)

• To investigate and demonstrate new approaches to the personalisation of access to multimedia data and metadata based on a combination of filtering and profiling techniques in a manner which respects the user's right to privacy
• To support automated, personalised service provisioning and service management with personalised content through the use of individualised metaphors or visualisation techniques
• To develop user profiles and corresponding profiling strategies suited to both casual users and professionals and adequately answering distinct requirements of large and small service providers
• To adapt content to new, personalised, nomadic and context-sensitive services
• To leverage user-centric tools which allow the user to choose the right individual balance between ‘push’ and ‘pull’ paradigms

This work is linked with KAIII /7 /13

Main type of actions

• Research and development
• Demonstrations
• Trials
• Standardisation
• Demonstration/trial in developing pan-European pilot applications

Specific evaluation criteria

• The work should be properly coordinated with advanced interface, agent, service creation, authentication, encryption, charging and billing research and development
• Ethical and privacy issues should be carefully addressed
• The work should take into account and if applicable possibly contribute to putting in place an appropriate regulatory framework
• The work should include human factors trials and should be proven in a wide range of real publishing scenarios
• Contribution to developments in international standardisation fora is encouraged
• The specific societal and cultural contexts of Europe, its members states and regions and how these may be taken in consideration in the structure and content of information systems should be addressed

Expected call dates 1999

Annotations

Economic and societal benefits

• Personalised applications should offer advertisers and content producers access to a variety of media repositories, such as regional newspapers and magazines in different European countries and electronic media for inter-European distribution. It will also create an additional value to the consumers offering them a strongly extended supply of media products and content, including access to public and private databases, information sources, entertainment and news.
• If privacy can be put back in the hands of the user, this offers the possibility of public spaces becoming more personalised and responsive to who is actually there. This is a way of democratising the information culture

Need to be undertaken at European level

The large potential of personalisation with regards to the development of new services and its far-reaching consequences in terms of privacy protection, ethical considerations and political sensitivity justify an action line within IST

How to monitor progress/impact

Demonstration of cross-media, cross-industry and cross-platform personalised services involving end-users

Other specifications or restrictions for the call

Relevant fiches

70, 73, 84, 86, 191, 294, 335, 578

3: Instructional Management Systems and Reusable Learning Material

RTD Objectives:

The objective is to develop and validate a coherent framework for integrating reusable technologies, tools and content into learning applications and services, including the creation, processing, managing, networking and discovery of learning material.

Instructional management systems should encompass the following (on the basis of emerging international standard architectures and frameworks in the domain):

1. Tools and methods for developing, sharing and reusing learning material (i.e. shared, distributed knowledge pools, learning meta-data, domain modelling quality assurance, common copyright handling mechanisms etc.).
2. Inter-operable applications to locate and manipulate platform independent learning objects (from a simple image to a course) at all granularity levels.
3. Tools and methods to support the integration of different pedagogical models and the collaborative and dynamic nature of learning (chat, bulletin board, computer conferencing, distributed tutoring, learner modelling, learning communities management, etc..)
4. Reusable application components and tools to manage learning activities (curriculum design, assessment, certification etc.)

The action should result in a significantly increased European presence and influence on the international scene in the domain by 2001, leading to more cost-effective and competitive design and production of learning environments.

This work is linked with KAIII /10/11/12.

Main Type of Action:

medium scale validation-of-concept RTD actions.

Specific Evaluation Criteria:

The proposed activities should explore generic components reusable in different learning domains and supporting smooth transitions between learning settings. Emphasis should be put on European-specific aspects like multilingual and intercultural issues. International co-operation with related activities outside Europe should be included.

Ability to contribute to relevant international standardisation fora in the domain.

Expected Call Dates: 1 call in 1999 and 1 call in 2000

Annotations:

Added European Value:

The reusable and platform-independent components will provide a framework by which de-facto standards for these components and their inter-working will be enforced leading to a reference architecture for scaleable instructional systems taking into account European-specific issues. These standards will enable the industry to develop educational systems in a cost-effective way and to offer affordable products to education and training institutions. Thus a broad dissemination of technology-based learning systems will be promoted.

Expected results:

• Proof-of-concept implementations of instructional systems with inter-operable components and their validation in different learning settings
• Strategies to generalise existing tools and content so that they become reusable in different contexts
• Impacts of an IMS on standard educational practices
• Feedback to technology developers
• Input for the definition of a reference architecture of an instructional management system and proposals for standards and their submission to standardisation bodies (accompanying measures)

Relative Priority: high

Monitoring of Progress:

Contribution to European and International standardisation working groups. Number of successful implementation of learning environments on the basis of IMS.

Relevant fiches 15, 86, 278

4: Advanced Learning Environments

RTD Objectives:

Conceive, develop and demonstrate highly innovative technical and pedagogical concepts and tools for future Education and Training environments on the basis of emerging technologies. The research action should promote the development of advanced components and pedagogical concepts for building future education and training applications and services. The proposed actions should be driven by educational/pedagogical needs and should demonstrate the impact in real learning environments.

Main Type of Action:

Small to Medium scale Proof-of-concept RTD Actions.

Specific Evaluation Criteria:

The proposed activities should suggest and explore innovative original concepts and should clearly demonstrate the potential and general impact on the problem being addressed. Access to appropriate existing technical environments and telecommunication structures is a prerequisite and a true multi-displinary approach including behavioural scientists, technologists and user representatives should be assumed. International cooperation with related activities outside Europe should be considered.

Expected Call Dates: Rolling Call open throughout 1999 and 2000

Annotations:

Added European Value:
The added European value is the exploitation of the higher education and industrial training environment and its close relationships to research which creates a good basis for early validation of new technologies and innovative pedagogical approaches in support of education and training. In the area of primary and secondary schools new pedagogical innovation enabled by ICT will provide strong incentives for further development and exploitation in the Member States. With the support of the planned research infrastructure support, it will be possible to develop and demonstrate a Europe/World wide approach to future technological and pedagogical solutions with a sufficient critical mass to have an impact at the world level with associated early creation of new practices, standards and services.

Expected results:

• Demonstration of leading edge approaches to innovation in learning exploiting new possibilities arising from state of the art technological platforms and advances in cognitive science.
• Advanced results on educational/pedagogical problem resolution through deployment of new ICT solutions.
• Validation of new technology and feedback to technology developers for improvements.
• Public Domain Software and concepts for experimenting with new education and training services and applications.

Relative Priority: High

Monitoring of Progress:

Peer-review of State-of-the-art, take-up of results

Further Call Specifications:

Specific focus and selection criteria for calls in 1999:

Examples (not exclusive) of possible topic areas to be covered:

• Experimentation with new learning environments based on technologies, fostering cognitive interactions and collaborative activities between school pupils and tutors; This could include evaluation tools and activities to assess and compare learning gains, e.g. metacognitive abilities. These environments could be developed in the context of a specific subject matter such as mathematics, sciences, history, language learning, or could address thematic issues such as environmental or cultural issues in order to experiment a multidisciplinary approach. They should allow for an evaluation of issues such as teacher training, content needed, comparison of different educational approaches.
• Virtual Laboratories in the learning context: (distributed) virtual laboratories exploiting advanced simulations, visualisation and communication technologies, aimed at demonstration of new pedagogical approaches based on emerging technology. This could be based on enabling technologies and concepts such as Remote Equipment Interfaces and Control, Collaborative Immersive Educational Environments, 3D Data Visualisation, Large Scale Multi-Media Conferencing and Interaction including Internet quality of service issues and advanced statistical information.
• Interdisciplinary research advancing basic understanding of learning and cognitive processes and the associated development of tools and environments to test and apply this understanding in real learning situations.

Relevant fiches 54, 145, 166, 191, 270, 283, 324, 333, 345, 352, 418

5: Re-engineering Life-Long Learning through ICT ⁽²⁾

RTD Objectives:

The general objective of this action is to mature- and accelerate the take-up of ICT enabled lifelong learning solutions at the European level through the development of innovative and compelling state of the art pilot projects and trials within the different market segments.

For 1999-2000 the following areas will be addressed:

1. The objective is to develop and demonstrate innovative educational services for schools which are usable in different European contexts. The services could combine different sources of information - Internet and digital television for example-, different content providers (publishers, museums, libraries...), should offer innovative ways of delivering and interacting with the information and with the learning community, and should address multicultural and multilingual aspects. The demonstrations should provide strong evidence of new sustainable models for collaboration between schools and content providers, cost efficiency, reengineering of learning processes and testing of new management tools (for IPR protection, for payments etc.) and the results are expected by 2001 to complement and contribute substantially to ongoing school initiatives within the Member States.
   
   
2. To develop and demonstrate new ICT based learning approaches for schools with the objective to enhance collaborative learning activities addressing a specific subject matter, or thematic issues such as environmental or cultural issues. This should provide substantiated broad experience with a multidisciplinary learning approach in a European context. The results of the action should provide a strong innovation drive for the reengineering of learning processes in schools across Europe.
   
   
3. To develop and demonstrate comprehensive concepts, tools and methods for the realisation of ICT enabled virtual universities with a European dimension. The target will be to demonstrate the validity of the underpinning technological platform, the pedagogical innovation enabled by the use of ICT and possible new forms of multimedia learning content, the associated process reengineering of the learning service providers and the ability to meet the future needs of the customers. By 2002 the action is expected to have a powerful catalytic effect on the European take-up of ICT enabled provision of cost-effective individual learning using the ICT based Virtual University concept, through world leading edge pilot projects, trials and associated best-practice dissemination.
   
   
4. To provide substantial evidence of ICT based training as a strategic solution for life-long learning, improving the overall opportunities and control of the student over his/her training career, and the development of the personal autonomy, by providing cost-effective, flexible and tailored continued learning opportunities for the individual also outside a formal educational context. The RTD will address the development and demonstration of self-sustaining exemplary multimedia products and services to deliver lifelong learning (including basic skills acquisition, learning skills, language learning, computer literacy, access to culture, societal and attitudinal skills), also involving new pedagogic approaches (e.g. self-, team- and reciprocal learning) to the widest possible public (including populations attended by the third sector: unemployed, marginal, handicapped, elderly, ill, etc) , and lifelong learning management tools and services.
   
   
5. Demonstrate innovative and scaleable approaches for the development and delivery of ICT-enabled training solutions to European industry and professionals, based on the mass customisation, flexibility and adaptation possibilities offered by the net. The action will address the usability, effectiveness, affordability and self-sustainability of new supporting services (exploiting emerging or state-of-the-art ICT technologies) which will allow all involved actors to develop cost-effective and efficient new training contents, products and services. The following areas of RTD will be addressed:
   • ICT based knowledge networks, centred around knowledge fields, as ways of brokering of collective contributions to training content into distributed repositories.
   • ICT based support for sectorial learning activities with the objective to demonstrate the effectiveness of central services to facilitate the building an delivery of learning products/services/activities adapted to the specific sectorial needs (e.g. employing the competencies, training and quality criteria of the sector), on the basis of general tools and content components.

By year 2001 the action should be able to succeed in establishing world class trials and demonstrations of applied knowledge networks in fields of major economic and societal importance, e.g. medical related professions, business management and ICT, and important sector support learning networks.

Main Type of Action:

Medium to Large scale validation and demonstration RTD Projects

Specific Evaluation Criteria:

Involvement of important sector actors.

All trials should include ample coverage of socio-economic aspects critical for the uptake of the results.

The proposed activities for schools should explore innovative concepts, closely involve teachers and be transferable in other educational European contexts. It should demonstrate potential for impacting on national activities.

The proposed activities for Virtual Universities should demonstrate a leading edge innovative systems approach integrating deployment of ICT, new pedagogical methods and business reengineering in higher education, including the cost-effectiveness of learning arising from the virtual university concept.

For actions related to the Learning Citizen, practical and innovative methods should be foreseen in order to test and measure the pedagogical effectiveness, cost-effectiveness (in relation to the proposed area, the proposed usage of technologies and the target users), usability and self-sustainability in a commercial context.

The professional training pilot projects should establish concrete ways to measure their success and effectiveness in helping overcome the identified bottleneck, as well as their scalability, in order to measure their potential to become blueprints for implementation of similar services in other sectors or for other training needs.

Expected Call Dates:

School of the future:
1 Call open in 1999 focusing on New educational services for schools; 1 call in 2000 covering new learning approaches (2000).

Virtual Universities:
1 Call open in 1999 focusing on State of the Art delivery platforms, associated pedagogical innovation and ICT enabled business re-engineering of higher education.
(in 2000 calls will focus on validation of IMS concepts and integration of virtual laboratories, digital libraries and interaction between research and learning)

The Learning Citizen:
1 Call open in 1999 and one call in 2000.

Professional Training:
1 Call open in 1999 and one call in 2000.

Annotations:

Expected Economic and Social Benefits:

Recent advances in networking and computing technologies combined with new pedagogical approaches offer promising opportunities for enhancing the effectiveness of learning by deploying innovative integrated multi-media approaches which can be used to help overcome some of the current limitations (lack of effective delivery platform, lack of interoperable instructional management systems, full integration of laboratories, libraries, tutors and learners) and provide compelling examples of pedagogical innovation enabled by the usage of ICT.

Added European Value:

School of the future: Giving a high visibility to experiments will allow credible results and best practice to be disseminated throughout the educational community. Fostering innovative educational practices including multi-cultural and multi-lingual issues can best be done at European level. Standardisation at a European level allowing easy co-operation between schools and exchange and reuse of learning tools and material.

Virtual Universities: The added European value is the selection of best practice demonstrators in Europe regarding implementation of ICT based virtual universities, which are expected to set important examples for the rest of the European education and training institutions. Furthermore it is expected that the projects will provide solutions and ideas for expanding ICT based virtual universities across countries and promoting the interaction between academic institutions and industry as future users and providers of education and training services. The action should also contribute to the setting of important technical and operational standards for higher education and training and associated software and service platforms.

Lifelong Learner: Experimental validation of exemplary training cases (and in special the non-for profit or third sector, language training and cultural, attitudinal and societal improvements) and of Lifelong Learner Knowledge Assets Banks.

Professional Training: Experimental validation in large scale pilots of ICT based training services clustered around business cases, in the areas of Professional Didactical Knowledge Networks and Universities of Industries. By the expected involvement of main actors relevant to each specific domain (professional associations, industrial associations, ministries, publishers, universities, resource centres) the action has the potential to become the EU reference for this type of ICT based service for professional training which will help accelerate the development a European market for cost-effective and targeted professional training.

Monitoring of Progress:

Involvement of key sector actors, take-up of key results at national level and by industry.

Further 1999 Call Specifications:

Demonstration and validation from a socio-economic as well as technical viewpoint in the different learning sectors. The work should include also the reengineering aspects of the learning processes associated with effective introduction of ICT based solutions.

Relevant fiches 69, 91, 150, 151, 162, 171, 172, 215, 234, 249, 268, 276, 277, 287, 425, 431, 437, 461, 495

6: Digital Representation and Preservation of Cultural Artifacts

RTD objective(s)

• To protect and exploit European cultural heritage through the use of digital technology
• To ensure long-term availability of the European intellectual and cultural record in digital form
• To enhance the longevity and usability of fragile resources through creation of digital surrogates
• To promote the development of networking and partnerships between custodial institutions
• To seamlessly integrate the rich cultural offerings of Europe’s museums, libraries, galleries and performance spaces via multimedia, communication and brokerage service techniques in order to encourage affordable, user-friendly and multilingual ubiquitous access

This work is linked with: KA3 /9 /13 /14

Main type of actions

• Research and development
• Demonstrations
• Trials
• Consensus building

Specific evaluation criteria

Consortia will be asked to:

• Have a cross-domain resource discovery approach
• Develop synergy with Action Line "New forms of content" and ensure use of novel content creation and management tools (3D, VR, objects)
• Use open standards and interoperable protocols
• Properly consider indexing issues and liaise with corresponding activities
• Properly consider authenticity and IPR issues
• Support scalable content re-use and re-packaging
• Involve professional and end-users
• Promote multi-disciplinarity by involving curators and technologists
• Support consensus building
• Respect EU subsidiarity principles

Expected call dates 1999

Annotations

Economic and societal benefits

This activity will provide:

• Opportunities for equality of access to cultural and knowledge resources
• Preservation of EU heritage and knowledge for future generations
• Adaptation of existing infrastructures and practices to the electronic environment
• Exploitation and preservation of the economic value of created and stored knowledge
• Stimulation of a European agenda for preservation

Need to be undertaken at European level

The EU dimension will ensure:

• Economies of scale and cost-effective use of resources. The problems of volumes of materials (electronic resources are being created exponentially and to shorter-lived technologies) require the common solutions and economies of scale only possible at EU level
• Development and exploitation of a recognised European cultural heritage

How to monitor progress/impact

• Agreed standards for preservation formats
• On-line wide-scale availability of digital heritage material and archival resources
• Large-scale demonstrations of preservation and deployment of cultural content

Other specifications or restrictions for the call

Relevant fiches 14, 122, 455, 593

7: Full Multilinguality

Full Title

Multilinguality in Digital Content and Services

Broad Objectives

To ease and speed up the deployment of a truly human-centred infostructure ensuring equal access and usage opportunities for all, irrespective of language, culture, education and computer literacy.

To enhance interpersonal and business communication in and between European languages, and to enable intuitive and effective use of digital content and services;

To support business in a multilingual and cross-cultural context, thus improving the international competitiveness of European products and services;

To stimulate new forms of partnership between IT vendors, telecommunications operators, content providers and users of interactive multimedia services, also in market segments relating to less-widely spoken languages and special-needs groups.

RTD Objectives

This action line will address the provision of advanced language-based technologies, resources and solutions supporting higher information productivity and communication effectiveness in a multilingual, cross-cultural environment. The aim is to develop novel language-processing tools and processes and to validate them within multilingual information and communication applications.

Priority assistance will be given to applications and embedded technologies in support of:

• Communication services and appliances (eg value-added voice services, multimedia computer messaging and conferencing);
• Interactive multimedia services:
  • Internationalisation of service interfaces and localisation of multimedia content taking account of the linguistic and cultural requirements of the target user groups;
  • Parallel authoring and maintenance of multimedia content in multiple languages;
  • Networked and computer aided translation and interpretation services;
• Business processes:
  • Corporate knowledge management, including technical authoring and terminology management;
  • Telebusiness and electronic commerce, including call centres;
  • Cross-cultural business training, especially computer aided language learning;
• Public interest services and special-needs groups;
• Electronic repositories of language knowledge underpinning the above, in standard and reusable formats.

Types of actions

Thematic project clusters will encompass targeted RTD, transfer of innovative technologies to a wider set of languages, and user-centred validation and demonstration.

RTD projects and other measures will encompass all languages in Europe and in major partner countries, foster collaborative links with national programmes and relevant international developments, and address coding and interchange standards, thematic networks and forums, market and technology watch and assessment, and take-up activities.

Specific evaluation criteria

• Faster and more cost-effective deployment of language-enabled information and communication systems; shorter time-to-market and higher return on investment;
• Enhanced robustness and scalability, and higher portability of language-based systems and solutions across domains, applications and languages;
• Broader skills base, especially with regard to the trans-disciplinary training of language researchers, engineers and professionals

Expected call dates

Two calls in the first year of implementation of the programme, namely in December 1998 and in March/June 1999.

Annotations

Relevant fiches: 90,202,322, 417

8: New forms of Content

RTD objective(s)

• To support the exploration of new content paradigms enabling the development of radically new forms of interactive audio-visual and other content-related services across all delivery networks, all quality levels and including multisensorial content
• To add value to content by taking full advantage of emerging audio-visual standards supporting the creation of new types of hybrid (real and synthetic), object-oriented ,interactive and indexed content elements
• To progress towards an object-based content environment as opposed to today's pixel-oriented content
• To explore the digital-enabled "new media" frontier between traditional distribution and transactional sectors
• To capitalise on European lead in design aesthetics and to contribute to the preservation of European cultural assets through innovative use of advanced content creation technology
• To achieve a content-technology symbiosis through the use of intuitive and transparent user interfaces allowing creators to directly "grasp" content
• To promote take-up of new content creation tools by creators and artists
• This work is linked with KA3 /1

Main type of actions

• Research and development
• Demonstrations

Specific evaluation criteria

• The work should be a healthy mix of "content-pull" and "technology-push"
• A cost-effective cross-industry, cross media and cross-platform approach is essential with an emphasis on enabling innovative scalable content re-use
• Consortia should be multi-disciplinary and be able to pull advanced interfaces and data handling research (audio processing, vision, 3D acquisition, 3D modelling, virtual environments, segmentation, multisensorial signal processing, artificial intelligence etc.) into the content creation area
• Content creation should be properly integrated in a networked and dynamic environment
• The participation of leading creative professionals from the performing arts, of content suppliers and producers is essential

Expected call dates 1999

Annotations

Economic and societal benefits

• Content is today at the heart of convergence between the telecom, TV and computer sectors. The rapid introduction of new and competing delivery mechanisms following deregulation is sharply increasing the demand for attractive and high-quality content. The resulting price cuts in delivery services tends to push the various sector actors up the value chain towards content production and packaging since this sector promises up to 50% of value added as compared to 20% for service operation and delivery and 10% for equipment. This in itself justifies a major effort to develop novel content-creation technologies.
• Technology is offering new ways of manipulating and presenting content. This is bound to impact aesthetics, structure, and meaning as well, effectively bringing vast changes and creating new methods and context. The work will contribute to emergence of a truly "new media".

Need to be undertaken at European level

• The adequate exploitation of Europe's content and technology assets requires a Europe-wide effort to pull the best of these worlds together and feed new services with attractive and high-quality content. Thanks to its cultural diversity, Europe is particularly well placed to benefit from the incoming content "gold-rush".

How to monitor progress/impact

• Development and presentation of high-quality material demonstrating new forms of content
• Effective use of emerging audio-visual standards for creation of new content forms
• Constant re-evaluation of approach and progress with respect to state-of-the-art
• Extent to which innovative forms of content are taken up by content providers for real production

Other specifications or restrictions for the call

Relevant fiches: 53, 296, 303, 320, 353, 360, 391, 495, 546, 578, 586, 250, 295, 403

9: Content assets management and access

RTD objective(s)

This action line will focus on large-scale multimedia asset management, tackled from 2 angles:

• Efficient multimedia warehousing, including connection with production and delivery systems, management of access, of integrity and of fragments
• Enabling the transparent access to distributed heterogeneous content resources

Projects in the action line will conduct RTD and innovative applications for the integration of technologies for large scale data warehousing, inter-operable access protocols, and IPR management. The development of the basic enabling technologies will proceed in key actions 4 and 2, but a content-oriented approach to their integration will develop in this action line. A particular focus will be given to inter-operable access to distributed content resources and to warehousing techniques adapted for identifying relevant content fragments and monitoring their usage and exploitation.

Scope: Publishing and media asset management systems, digital library repositories management systems

Main type of actions

The action line would combine two types of projects:

1. Technology development, integration RTD and pilot trials for adapting advanced warehousing technologies to the needs of specific types of contents, and innovative access mechanisms or business models
2. Concerted actions, standardisation and RTD projects for enabling transparent access to contents from heterogeneous sources

Specific evaluation criteria

Expected call dates 1999

Annotations

Economic and societal benefits

Economical benefits: extended content economy by enlarged and more cost-effective marketing of and access to large-scale content repositories

Social benefits (in particular for access to cultural resources): increased ability for users to access and assess resources they need for their personal development or their collective activities

Need to be undertaken at European level

The European added value is obvious for the access to heterogeneous resources side of the action line. Concertation and integration is needed at an even wider level, but a strong European co-operation such as it is presently conducted in projects like Aquarelle is needed to put European players in a position to significantly influence world wide standardisation and inter-operability.

Regarding the content assets management side, the need for European RTD comes from the scale of the problems to be addressed and the relatively small number of large repositories for which developments can be marketed in the short term. National markets are too narrow to exploit successfully advanced content warehousing systems and software. But these are key enablers for the emerging contents economy as a whole.

Monitorable objectives and how to monitor them

• 4-5 large-scale asset management systems for various types of contents integrated and tried in real market or public access conditions, with precise monitoring of the increase in access / markets for the corresponding assets
• Open availability of inter-operability toolkits for access to heterogeneous multimedia resources
• Strong European contribution to global standards in the field of inter-operable access to content resources

Other specifications or restrictions for the call

Links with other action lines

This action line needs to be co-ordinated with action lines

• (2) Personalising contents,
• (3) Instructional management systems (educational resource brokerage services)
• (10) and (11) (technologies for identification of content fragments and production of associated metadata)

and with Key action 4 and Key action 2 (IPR management systems).

Relevant fiches and other background

14, 15, 87, 127, 158, 166, 171, 267, 280, 289, 326, 399, 454, 455

See also SP 2^nd, 4^th and 5^th RTD priority in the 1^st bullet point, 2^nd RTD priority in the 4^th bullet point and background documents from the various consultation workshops organised by DGXIII/E (Electronic publishing and Digital libraries)

10: Active Content

Full Title

Active Assimilation and Use of Digital Content: Speech and language enabled multimedia content processing

Broad Objectives

To ease and speed up the deployment of a truly human-centred infostructure ensuring equal access and usage opportunities for all, irrespective of language, culture and computer literacy;

To enhance interpersonal and business communication in and between European languages, and to enable intuitive and effective use of digital content and services;

To support business in a multilingual and cross-cultural context, thus improving the international competitiveness of European products and services;

To stimulate new forms of partnership between IT vendors, telecommunications operators, content providers and users of interactive multimedia services, also in market segments relating to less-widely spoken languages.

RTD Objectives

This action line will address effective access to digital content and its meaningful assimilation and (re)use. The main aim will be to exploit the linguistic knowledge embedded in multimedia content to make it fully searchable and facilitate further processing and delivery.

It will cover language-processing models, technologies and components in support of knowledge intensive applications, addressing:

• Cross-lingual information indexing, navigation and retrieval;
• Cross-lingual knowledge discovery, topic identification and information extraction;
• Deep information analysis and meaning-based information profiling and routing;
• Text, speech and metadata generation;
• Text abstracting and summarisation;
• Electronic repositories of language knowledge underpinning the above, in standard and reusable formats.

Types of actions

Thematic project clusters will encompass targeted RTD, transfer of innovative technologies to a wider set of languages, and user-centred validation and demonstration.

RTD projects and other measures will encompass all languages in Europe and in major trade partners, foster collaborative links with national programmes and relevant international developments, and address coding and interchange standards, thematic networks and forums, market and technology watch and assessment, and take-up activities.

Specific evaluation criteria

• Faster and more cost-effective deployment of language-enabled information and communication systems; shorter time-to-market and higher return on investment;
• Improved robustness and scalability, and higher portability of language-based systems and solutions across domains, applications and languages;
• Broader skills base, especially with regard to the trans-disciplinary training of language researchers, engineers and professionals

Expected call dates

Two calls in the first year of implementation of the programme, namely in December 1998 and in March/June 1999.

Annotations

Relevant fiches: 125, 326, 377, 392, 417

11: Analysis, indexing, retrieval and filtering for visual, auditory and numerical media

Title

Analysis, indexing, retrieval and filtering for visual, auditory and numerical media

RTD objective(s)

RTD in this action line will develop technologies and applications for processing large sets of documents of all non-text media in order to make possible:

• the indexing of large multimedia databases in a way that improves their accessibility and the potential for use and exploitation of their contents,
• the ability of users to efficiently retrieve and filter relevant information
• the operation of innovative services in information search and brokerage

As a whole, the action line would cover:

• Indexing and retrieval technologies, associated services and applications
• Feature extraction usable for summarisation, filtering, visualisation, and browsing of information spaces

Scope: All non-textual ⁽³⁾ media types. In particular visual and auditory media such as still images, video, sound and music, 3D models and other spatial information including geographical, numerical and statistical information.

Results: Projects supported in this action line would produce:

• Analysis, indexing, feature extraction, feature set coding, storage and matching software,
• Software, services and applications for information localisation and retrieval using advanced content processing, in particular in global networked environments

with a particular emphasis on modular software that can be separately marketed, or integrated in networked services.

Main type of actions

RTD projects, including possibly basic research projects when associated with a clear route to future exploitation. A progressive bottom-up clustering approach would be used. The action line would be implemented in at least 2 calls. The first call would cover the full scope of the action line, and projects would be evaluated on the basis of their independent own merit, while taking in account how well they address the requirement for modularity and inter-operability of their results. Following that first call, 1 or 2 clusters would be set in place depending on the nature of the projects selected. Existing RTD projects from 4^th FP in similar domains would also be invited to participate. The second would focus on topics needed to ensure coverage and synergy in the activities and output of the clusters. It is expected that this approach could provide a satisfactory compromise between a bottom-up approach to clustering and global synergy.

Specific evaluation criteria

This action line will focus on projects that include a precise exploitation objective, either through marketing indexing and retrieval software, or through the exploitation of information services. The evaluation of the time frame for this exploitation objective will be adapted to the degree of innovation in the proposed research.

Expected call dates First call in 1999, second in 2000.

Annotations

Economic and societal benefits

This action line focuses of the core underlying content technologies for the future generations of systems, tools and software enabling users to master information spaces and content providers to make them accessible and marketable.

Need to be undertaken at European level

There is a rich tradition of information retrieval oriented research in Europe, in particular linked to media digital libraries. Unfortunately, a large part of the results obtained in the corresponding activities have remained "locked" in the particular applications for which they have been developed, and their exploitation has been very limited. It is expected that the fact of conducting RTD at a co-operative European level, and putting emphasis from the start on modularly exploitable and combinable generic software can help in reaching a critical mass in addressing these issues. Even more evidently, information access itself being of world wide scale, innovative solutions to its problems can only be designed and developed at a sufficient scale. Finally, content-based technologies, and their combination with language technologies are the most potential tools to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers to information access.

Monitorable objectives and how to monitor them

It is expected that the action line would make possible within 3 or 4 years:

• To use content-based search in association to classical descriptive metadata and user-controlled navigation in a reliable way for the access to still image collections of several hundred of thousands images, or video and music databases libraries of several thousands of hours,
• To develop European-operated global information services for some media or specialised fields, the exact nature of which cannot be known in advance.
• Significantly contribute to make searchable information spaces such as 3D models databases or documents with embedded numerical, mathematical or statistical data.

The monitoring of all objectives would carefully take in account the specific contribution made by EU RTD compared to on-going research in other zones or geographical levels. Co-ordination with National initiatives in the same fields will be set in place.

Other specifications or restrictions for the call

Links with other action lines

This action line needs to be co-ordinated with action lines

• (2) Personalising contents (use of automatically extracted metadata to deliver personalised information services),
• (9) Contents asset management and access
• (13) Information representation, visualisation and navigation

Action line (14) Media models, representations and standards is closely linked (in particular, requirements related to standards such as MPEG-7) and it is expected that participants in action line (12) would also participate to the concerted actions implementing action line (14). The action line must also be co-ordinated with Key action 4 (enabling technologies in digital signal processing, pattern recognition and visualisation), and Key action 2 (interface with IPR management systems).

Relevant fiches and other background

128, 144, 201, 302, 346, 417, 481

See also SP 1^st and 3^rd RTD priorities in the 4^th bullet point, and many background documents from ESPRIT, ACTS and various industry constituencies or National programmes.

12: Information representation, visualisation and navigation

Title

Information representation, visualisation and navigation

RTD objective(s)

RTD in this action line will develop technologies that enable individual users in the personal and the professional world to access, assess and manipulate information in an enhanced way. Specifically, these technologies should improve the ability of users to:

• Locate relevant information in information spaces for all media,
• View the content of these information spaces in a structured and adaptable way,
• Assess the contents of documents or data sets, for instance through visualisation, interactive access, comparison and annotation

But also enable information and media producers to make larger sets of information searchable and thus exploitable.

As a whole, the action line would cover:

• Visualisation, browsing, and navigation in information spaces, with a particular attention to the metaphors based for instance on space and time metaphors
• Representation of contents of documents or data sets

Scope: All non-textual ⁽⁴⁾ media types. In particular visual and auditory media such as still images, video, sound and music, 3D models and other spatial information including geographical, numerical and statistical information.

Results: Projects supported in this action line would produce:

• Interface software for information discovery, query formulation, navigation and browsing in information spaces,
• Interactive software for analysing, assessing and comparing document and data sets,

with a particular emphasis on modular software that can be separately marketed, or integrated with other software in networked systems and services.

Main type of actions

This action line will focus on RTD projects (including basic research clearly targeted at the objectives of the action line), with a strong emphasis on the early trial and assessment of proposed solutions by their targeted users, in the real environment of the targeted exploitation. Such assessment would be expected to start early in the design phase of the projects, using mock-up models if necessary.

Specific evaluation criteria

At the consortium level, participation of content owners and providers as well as of potential exploiters of the technologies in information access services or tools would be expected. At the human resources level, it is expected that the project teams would include content specialists (that often bring the know-how on how to represent contents), and interaction designers.

Expected call dates 1999

Annotations

Economic and societal benefits

Information representation for information discovery, browsing, navigation and assessment has been widely identified as the key to user-friendly, cross-lingual interfaces and user empowerment in the information society.

Need to be undertaken at European level

It is expected that the fact of conducting RTD at a co-operative European level, and putting emphasis from the start on modularly exploitable and combinable generic software can help in reaching a critical mass in addressing these issues.

Monitorable objectives and how to monitor them

The objectives chosen for monitoring this action lines must reflect the fact that it is supposed to produce qualitative (functionality enhancement) benefits, for users as well as for information providers:

• Deliver practical solutions to the difficult problem of representing the contents of large dynamic information spaces for all media in a manner enabling interactive discovery, access and analysis
• Deliver software that enables users to compare, annotate and re-use (in particular for the sake of analysis, criticism and pedagogy) the contents of time-based documents and dynamic data

To address the difficulty of monitoring such qualitative objectives, projects would be required to identify measures of how well they are reached (such measures cannot be set independently of the proposed solutions).

Other specifications or restrictions for the call

Links with other action lines

This action line needs to be co-ordinated with action lines

• (9) Content assets management and access
• (11) Analysis, indexing and retrieval for visual, auditory and numerical media

Relevant fiches and other background

272, 281, 294, 327, 351, 507

See also SP 1^st and 3^rd RTD priorities in the 4^th bullet point, 2^nd RTD priority in the 1^st bullet point and background documents from ESPRIT, ACTS and various industry constituencies or National programmes.

13: Natural Interactivity

Full Title

Natural Interactivity and Accessibility: Speech and language enabled interfaces and input-output.

Broad Objectives

To ease and speed up the deployment of a truly human-centred infostructure ensuring equal access and usage opportunities for all, irrespective of language, computer literacy and disabilities;

To enhance interpersonal and business communication in and between European languages, and to enable intuitive and effective use of digital content and services;

To support business in a multilingual and cross-cultural context, thus improving the international competitiveness of European products and services;

To stimulate new forms of partnership between IT vendors, telecommunications operators, content providers and users of interactive multimedia services, also in market segments relating to less-widely spoken languages and special-needs groups.

RTD Objectives

To enhance information access and interpersonal communication in and between European languages, thus enabling intuitive and effective use of digital services.

This action line will address:

• Speech- and language-based interfaces with advanced dialogue capabilities;
• Spoken and written language input-output and keyboard-less operation;
• Voice-driven command and control systems in demanding (eg noisy, in-vehicle) environments;
• Interactive multimodal systems understanding messages embodied in speech, language and other related communicative acts;
• Embedded interfaces and utilities for personal and group communications, including speaker verification and language identification;
• New theories and models for enhanced, reliable understanding and generation of spoken and written language;
• Electronic repositories of language knowledge underpinning the above, in standard and reusable formats.

Types of actions

Thematic project clusters will encompass targeted RTD, transfer of innovative technologies to a wider set of languages, and user-centred validation and demonstration.

RTD projects and other measures will encompass all languages in Europe and in major partner countries, foster collaborative links with national programmes and relevant international developments, and address coding and interchange standards, thematic networks and forums, market and technology watch and assessment, and take-up activities.

Specific evaluation criteria

• Faster and more cost-effective deployment of language-enabled information and communication systems; shorter time-to-market and higher return on investment;
• Enhanced robustness and scalability, and higher portability of language-based systems and solutions across domains, applications and languages;
• Broader skills base, especially with regard to the trans-disciplinary training of language researchers, engineers and professionals.

Expected call dates

Two calls in the first year of implementation of the programme, namely in December 1998 and in March/June 1999 Expected call dates

Annotations

Relevant fiches: 156, 199, 204, 321, 322, 323, 374, 392, 412, 413, 539

14: Media Representations, Models and Standards

Title

Media Representations, Models and Standards

RTD objective(s)

• To develop innovative tools for scalable representation, modeling and coding of all media types including Audio-Visual content, 3D, metadata and up to multisensorial content (eg. force-feedback)
• To establish and promote efficient cross-domain representation models (eg. hybrid real and synthetic image representation models)
• To actively contribute to standardisation activities at the world level
• This work is linked with KAIII /?

Main type of actions

• Research and development
• Demonstrations
• Trials
• Standardisation

Specific evaluation criteria

• Strong commitment and active participation in standardisation activities is a prerequisite
• Tools should support delivery over heterogenous networks and platforms, should allow different quality of service and should enable content re-purposing across sectors
• The work should be done in the framework of trials demonstrating the integration of advanced representation tools in a complete content delivery chain
• Coordination with related activities in KAIV and FET (vision, cognitive science, analysis, understanding, modeling etc..)

Expected call dates

Annotations

Economic and societal benefits

• Open standards will yield economies of scale and cost effectiveness. Innovative representation models will support the creation of advanced forms of content, which in turn will enable the emergence of new, content-rich services

Need to be undertaken at European level

• The world-level standardisation aspect of this activity fully justifies a coordinated European approach

How to monitor progress/impact

• Leadership and contribution in leading standardisation bodies
• Number of patents relevant filed
• Demonstration of availabilty of broad open standard for multimedia representation, modelling and coding

Other specifications or restrictions for the call

Relevant fiches: 145, 205, 200, 547

⁽¹⁾ Or wider.

⁽²⁾ This Action line description is partially incomplete with respect to annotations for all sectors addressed

⁽³⁾ But use of textual and speech information included in non-text media (such as video soundtracks) or associated with them is covered.

⁽⁴⁾ But use of textual and speech information included in non-text media (such as video soundtracks) or associated with them is covered.

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