Sustainable Urban Precincts Project: Postgraduate Research Award PhD
Scholarship
iCO2mmunity: Context-aware activity and movement monitoring for university-wide
engagement towards greener living
School of Computer Science and Information Technology, RMIT University
The Project
How to engage building occupants and the public with the issues of carbon emission
reduction and energy use?
If the built environment could communicate effectively to occupants about these
issues, would this encourage behavioural change?
How does your personal carbon footprint measure up to that of your peers – daily,
weekly, monthly?
This project aims to provide individual and community level engagement and public
interventions towards greener behavioural changes using design and technological
solutions. This is done by applying context-aware and mobile computing research
through three major tasks: 1) context-aware sensing and analytics of energy use, 2)
context-aware activity monitoring of occupants and visitors, and 3) context-aware
gestural interaction that facilitate personalized feedback and public participation.
The proliferation of mobile devices, sensors, and digital artefacts in our built
environment has transformed spatial interactions in urban communities. Crowdsourced and sensor data from mobile phones and social networks, if analysed and
visualised, can indicate the level of green living awareness of individuals and
communities. This project is designed to help RMIT staff and students to monitor and
compare carbon footprints generated from their work, study, and travel activities.
Data gathered from monitoring movements and activities of RMIT students and staff
in, around, and outside the main buildings of the city campus will be correlated with
personal carbon footprint and energy consumption data. To engage the communities
of staff and students at RMIT, this data will be analysed and visualized in an
innovative way, through designing and developing adaptive and responsive
environments.
The PhD Project
The PhD Scholarships is available for a dynamic, independent individual with
expertise in data analytics and visualization and an interest in context-aware
computing, activity monitoring, and computer human interaction. The specific PhD
project description and selection criteria are as follows.
PhD Project 1.5.2: Context-aware gestural interaction
Although recently released interaction devices such as Microsoft Xbox Kinect and
Leap Motion have popularized gestural interactions, the majority of people are still
not used to interacting with digital information using gestures. There can be multiple
contextual data that will determine whether gestural interaction can be intuitive based
on the environmental conditions and users’ personal contexts. The PhD candidate will
analyze contextual data regarding and around the users before, during, and after each
interaction, inferred from sensors and vision based system, to establish a generic and
adaptive context-aware model and system for interacting with information using
gestures in various cases. Two case studies will be observed. The first is contextaware gestural interaction models that engage the public to participate and interact
with public displays (screens) using their gestures. The scenario for the first case is
for green living. In this case, information and visualization from 2 other SUPP PhD
Projects will be used on public displays for the model to be evaluated. The second
case study is context-aware and gestural interaction models for individuals,
personalized for different types of users in different contexts, such as while driving.
The effectiveness of the gestural interaction system will also be evaluated. The PhD
candidate will have a background in Computer Science, with strong programming
skills and a good understanding of interaction design or data modelling. Experiences
with vision-based processing and sensor data analytics are preferable.
Selection Criteria
The successful applicant should:
• Demonstrate excellent undergraduate academic performance in a field related to the
proposed research.
• Have completed a Masters degree or Honours degree (with a minor thesis or
research component) with distinction.
• Have demonstrated research excellence in the field related to the proposed research
through a relevant publication track-record resulting from their previous thesis work.
• Demonstrate the ability to organise and work independently as well as part of a
team.
What does the scholarship provide?
• Tax-free stipend of $30,000 per annum over 3.5 years and an RTS place for
Australian citizens or permanent residents in a doctoral degree within the School of
Computer Science and Information Technology. A fee waiver may be available for
outstanding international applicants.
• Applicants should discuss their eligibility with project leader Dr Flora Salim from
the School of CS & IT before applying:
flora.salim@rmit.edu.au, phone +61 3 9925 4572
http://florasalim.com
The Research Team
This research project involves experts from design and computer science research in
the School of Computer Science and IT, and the Spatial Information Architecture
Laboratory (SIAL), and Design Research Institute. The chief investigators of the
project are Dr. Flora Salim, Dr. Margaret Hamilton, and Dr. Jane Burry. The project
will deliver practical technological outcomes that will be deployed and used by staff
and students to increase self- and community- awareness of green living behaviours.
Successful candidates will be supervised by Dr. Flora Salim.
Dr. Flora Salim is a Research Fellow at the School of Computer Science and
Information Technology, RMIT University. Her expertise is primarily in the area of
context-aware computing, data modelling and analysis, and intelligent systems with
application areas in intelligent transportation systems, adaptive architecture, and smart
cities. She received her PhD in Computer Science from Monash University in 2009.
She has published at least 45 international peer-reviewed articles in significant
conferences, journals, and book chapters. She is a member of the team who secured
an ARC Linkage grant on integrating real-time public transport data. She has secured
other internal and external grants to the total value of over than $1million in the last
four years of her postdoctoral research, including the IBM Smarter Planet Industry
Skills Innovation Award 2010, the RMIT Ian Permezel Memorial Award 2010.
This project is funded by the RMIT Sustainable Urban Precincts Project (SUPP)