Using Real Time data to Understand
and support Human Behaviour
Paul Watson
Newcastle University, UK
Real time Data Sources increasing
Environmental
Medical
In Car
Sensors
Location
CCTV
RFID
ANPR
Real time Data Sources increasing
e-mail
People
twitter
(directly)
text
Real time Data Sources increasing
People
(indirectly)
Software as a
Service
Challenge
How can we use real-time information to
influence behaviour (for the good)?
Key Stages
What data to collect?
Sensors
Collect
People
Process
How to model and
reason about behaviour?
Intervention
Influence
How to influence behaviour?
Examples from Recent Work at Newcastle.....
Social Inclusion Through the Digital Economy (Hub)
Digital Technologies
Social Inclusion
Professor Phil Blythe
Visalakshmi Suresh
CENEX Electric Smart Car
Real-time Vehicle Monitoring
Real-time Data Management
(at Ncl University)
GPS &
Engine
Management
Systems
Existing Traffic
Management
Systems
TRIP SUMMARY
TRIP SUMMARY
1. Power Consumed
(.0611KWh)
2. Average Temperature (4)
3. Break Pedal Pressed (996)
4. Distance (8.4 km)
5. Speed (34 km/h)
6. Carbon foot print (6.972 g)
Battery Depletion
Integrate with Satnav
to guide driver to
charging station
Assisting Older Drivers
• Can data analysis determine long-term issues?
– cognitive impairments
• Short-term problems
– effects of drugs
• Suggest the need for assistive technologies
Influencing Driver Behaviour
What data to collect?
Sensors
Collect
People
Process
How to model and
reason about behaviour?
Intervention
e.g. Distance Alert
How to influence behaviour?
Engine Management
GPS
Influence
Identify patterns that
require intervention
Can we use pervasive technologies to allow
people to stay longer in their own homes?
Professor Patrick Olivier, Newcastle University
Supporting people with dementia
• People in the early stages of
dementia want to continue living
at home.
• They have problems with:
– episodic memory
– executive control (planning,
sequencing, attentional control)
“Gets the kettle, fills it,
switches it on…But then
she’ll stand there, and I’ll
say – ‘what are you doing
now?’ and I’ve jogged her
memory again…She gets
the coffee jar, and she’ll
take the top off the jar. And
she’ll look at it and think
‘what am I doing with this
off for?”
Ambient Kitchen
Activity Recognition Video
Influencing People with Dementia
What data to collect?
Sensors
People
Process
How to model and
reason about behaviour?
Intervention
Prompting
Alerts
How to influence behaviour?
RFID
Accelerometers in utensils
Floor pressure
Video
Collect
Influence
Data Mining,
Activity Recognition
Partially Ordered Markov
Decision Processes
e-Science Central
• Software as a Service for e-Science
Software as a Service
Real-time
data
exchange
Sharing can be integral
part of application
- in real time
System receives info from
all users in real time
• challenge is how to
influence user behaviour
e-Science Central
Store, Analyse, Automate, Share
•Web based
•Works anywhere
e-Science
Central
Software as a
Service
• Dynamic Resource
Allocation
• Pay-as-you-Go*
Social
Networking
•Controlled Sharing
• Collaboration
• Communities
Cloud
Computing
Blogs and links
e-Science Central – Social Networking
Provenance powers Dashboards &
Collective Intelligence
Influencing Behaviour of Scientists
What data to collect?
Sensors
People
Process
How to model and
reason about behaviour?
Intervention
Advise on best practise : “Most of
your colleagues use workflow W to
analyse the type of data you’ve just
uploaded”
Alert when interesting new data
appears
Putting people in touch with experts
Provenance (store,
analyse, share)
Social Connections
Collect
Influence
Graph theory, collective
intelligence, provenance
analysis
How to influence behaviour?
3 Key Technical Challenges
Understanding and Influencing
Behaviour
Real World
Computer Model
Computer Scientists
Domain Researchers
Social Scientists
Capture
Model
Reason
Influence
Personalisation
• Influencing requires personalisation
• There has been recent work on algorithms to
analyse vast amounts of data
– e.g. collective intelligence, web analysis
• Assumptions behind most of this work:
– no privacy issues
– results not needed in real-time
• More focus needed on personalisation &
timeliness
– presenting useful information, in real-time, observing
privacy
Scalability
• Real-time data pattern matching & processing
 complex event processing?
• Historic Analysis
 cloud?
Our General Architecture
Consumers &
Generators
Consumers
App
App
App
App
Generators
App
Filter
Real Time
Historic
Sensors
Inform
Event Processing
Sensor events
→ Application events
Create Models
Calibrate Models Data Warehouse
Aggregations
Summary
• Real time data increasing
– Sensors
– Software as a Service
• Key is to extract value from this data by
understanding the real-world behaviour it
represents
• Grand challenge is to use this information to
influence behaviour (for the good)