This submission presented work carried out by researchers in the Departments of Computer Science; Design Engineering and Mathematics; and Natural Sciences at Middlesex University. A total of 69 members of staff were involved, working in five research groups: Interaction Design; Algorithms and Software Engineering; Intelligent Environments; Networks and Distributed Systems; and Artificial Intelligence.
The impact we achieved
This research project has advanced Digital Twin (DT) research in foundational DT programming technologies and in digital twins for structural health monitoring of large-scale infrastructures. A strong example of how Middlesex researchers collaborate with industry to address emerging problems, the project’s key impacts are:
The research behind it
Professor Barn and Professor Clark have developed language-based simulation and modelling techniques to design, analyse and adapt the development of complex enterprise systems. Their construction of an executable modelling language called LEAP, together with a toolset for enterprise simulation, have addressed the unsuitability of the pre-existing approaches to DT representation of enterprise modelling as basis for simulation analysis. This led to the creation of a novel programming language called ESL and an associated development platform called EDB which can be used to aid decision-makers.
In the area of structural health monitoring of large infrastructure artefacts, Professor Nguyen has been addressing the problem of how to detect damage and predict future maintenance requirements of large infrastructures such as bridges in collaboration with the University of Transport and Communications (UTC), Vietnam. Professor Nguyen has developed a novel hybrid approach delivering highly accurate results in detecting damage and its severity even for multiple damage scenarios. The resulting method is a practical end-to-end data-driven framework for automatically monitoring the operational state of structures.
The people involved at Middlesex and beyond
The Middlesex research team behind the project consisted of Professor Balbir Barn, Professor Tony Clark, Professor Huan Nguyen, Dr Mohsin Raza, and Dr Dang Viet Hung.
Our partners included industry (Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India), government and academia (Vietnam), and an NGO (India). In 2019 Middlesex established the London Digital Twin Research Centre where the Smart Cyber Factory facility supplied by our partners Festo Didactic and Siemens has been building on the project’s work.
Photo of full-scale testing of a real-life bridge
The impact we achieved
This research project has pioneered the use of Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT), which can be used to image organ function in real time (100 images/second). Compared with existing technology it is highly portable, inexpensive and lends itself readily to remote imaging to save lives. The project's key impacts are:
The research behind it
The impact described above evolved from a series of specific developments employing EIT, including:
The research continued to flourish and diversify throughout the coronavirus pandemic when we repurposed the hardware and techniques for monitoring COVID-19 pneumonia in adult ITUs.
The people involved at Middlesex and beyond
The Middlesex research team behind the project consists of Professor Richard Bayford, Dr Andrew Tizzard, and Dr Andy Bardill.
Along the way, the team has collaborated with several universities, hospitals and industry partners – locally, nationally and globally – including the Great Ormond Street Hospital and UCL (UK); Oulu University Hospital and University of Oulu (Finland), Nicosia General Hospital (Cyprus), Sentec (previously called Swisstom) and Emergex (UK); and Dartmouth College and Florida State University (USA).
The impact we achieved
This research project has advanced Computer Science through a new system architecture for Intelligent Environments (IE) which generates measurable impacts in several directions and for the benefit of citizen groups – locally and internationally – often neglected by the technology giants. The project’s key impacts are:
We have also developed and finessed methods and tools designed to assist citizens with context awareness, now used by industry, and have shared knowledge with decision-makers, politicians and public sector influencing policy for specific citizen groups, such as those experiencing early symptoms of dementia-like conditions. Concepts developed with our help also led to business development within the European market.
The research behind it
Intelligent Environments refer to systems which exist in a physical environment enriched with sensing technology and Artificial Intelligence algorithms to provide context-sensitive help to humans. Since 2013, our Research Group has focused on specific challenges in these systems around the core concepts of contexts and context-awareness, guided by users’ specific needs within practical contexts and by their expectations from system services in those contexts. The underpinning research includes:
The people involved
Our research team behind this project consisted of Professor Juan Carlos Augusto, Carl James-Reynolds, Dr Ralph Moseley, Dr Mark Springett, and Dr Jill Stewart.
The impact we achieved
This multi-disciplinary research project has focused on advancing technology for social good, particularly for marginalised young people in conflict with the law. Bringing together different computer science, social policy and criminology, our work has made a difference locally, nationally and globally to policy and strategy, public education, and the growth of an international SME (GNB) working in the social enterprise sector. The project’s key impacts are:
The research behind it
At the initiation of this research (2013), there were over 20,000 first time entrants into the youth system, with 66,430 young people forming the case load of YOTs nationally (2012 data). To ease this workload, we envisaged the use of a personalised smartphone app to support interactions between case workers and young people. Our research team worked closely with young people and their managers to co-design the app, adopting a value sensitive approach. The resulting conceptual model for value sensitive concerns has formed a substantive body of research reported internationally, on what has since become an important research area. The underpinning research included:
The people involved at Middlesex and beyond
The Middlesex research team behind the project were Professor Balbir Barn, Professor Franco Raimondi, and Dr Giuseppe Primiero.
Our research team has worked in collaboration with several stakeholders across sectors including three Youth Offending Services in England, social enterprise Global Notice Board (GNB), and Royal Holloway, University of London.
The impact we achieved
The VALCRI project (Visual Analytics for sense-making in Criminal Intelligence Analysis) focused on enhancing criminal and intelligence investigations by bringing together academia, law enforcement and industry from across 17 organisations throughout Europe. The project’s output was a visual analysis system using tactile reasoning which enhances criminal and intelligence investigations and its key impacts were:
The research behind it
Police intelligence analysts only ever have fragmented data from which to investigate cases and pre-empt terrorist attacks. They also operate in large numbers of datasets and volumes of data, and when they discover relevant information, they assemble evidential chains and narratives that must create a convincing argument and be able to withstand interrogation in court. Police therefore need a combination of tools to discover relevant data across vast data sets. VALCRI’s impact stemmed from its development of technology which addressed this problem by allowing users to interact fluidly with the data and task at hand, using a radically different user-interface based on the concept of tactile reasoning, while ensuring analytic rigour. As a result, hypotheses can be formulated and tested quickly, enabling investigators to discard or modify their hypotheses within minutes and hours, rather than days and weeks.
The project was underpinned by Professor Wong’s research into the representation design of information and the interaction design of user interfaces to support human decision making in complex dynamic environments. The invention of interaction design INVISQUE (2009) – the interactive visual search and query environment that makes information graspable, enabling ‘tactile reasoning’, an epistemic action that facilitates sense-making and decision making – in combination with other visual analytics research projects including the UKVAC (UK Visual Analytics Consortium) and the EPSRC MakingSense project (2010-13) drove the design of VALCRI.
The people involved at Middlesex and beyond
The research team at Middlesex University consisted of Professor B.L. William Wong, Dr Neesha Kodagoda, Dr Chris Rooney, Patrick Seidler, and Stefan Lozovanu.
The VALCRI consortium – led by Professor Wong – comprised 9 universities and research organisations, 5 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), and 3 Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) from across Europe, bringing together 103 scientists and engineers with a diverse set of expertise.
