Prof Jessie Kennedy's Supervisions (3)

PhD 3D Database Environments
Doctorate

Level	Doctorate
Student	Prof Kenny Mitchell
Status	Complete
Part Time	No
Years	1994 - 1997
Project Title	3D Database Environments
Awarding Institution	Edinburgh Napier University
Director of Studies	Jessie Kennedy

PhD
Doctorate

Level	Doctorate
Student	Dr Alan Cannon
Status	Complete
Part Time	No
Years	2001 - 2006
Project Title	Interactive Visualisation Tools for Supporting Taxonomists Working Practice
Project Description	The necessity for scientists and others to use consistent terminology has recently been regarded as fundamental to advancing scientific research, particularly where data from disparate sources must be shared, compared or integrated. One area where there are significant difficulties with the quality of collected data is the field of taxonomic description. Taxonomic description lies at the heart of the classification of organisms and communication of ideas of biodiversity. As part of their working practice, taxonomists need to gather descriptive data about a number of specimens on a consistent basis for individual projects. Collecting semantically well-defined structured data could improve the clarity and comparability of such data. No tools however currently exist to allow taxonomists to do so within their working practice. Ontologies are increasingly used to describe and define complex domain data. As a part of related research an ontology of descriptive terminology for controlling the storage and use of flowering plant description data was developed. This work has applied and extended model-based user interface development environments to utilise such an ontology for the automatic generation of appropriate data entry interfaces that support semantically well defined and structured descriptive data. The approach taken maps the ontology to a system domain model, which a taxonomist can then specialise using their domain expertise, for their data entry needs as required for individual projects. Based on this specialised domain knowledge, the system automatically generates appropriate data entry interfaces that capture data consistent with the original ontology. Compared with traditional model-based user automatic interface development environments, this approach also has the potential to reduce the labour requirements for the expert developer. The approach has also been successfully tested to generate data entry interfaces based on an XML schema for the exchange of biodiversity datasets.
Awarding Institution	Edinburgh Napier University
Director of Studies	Jessie Kennedy
Thesis	Interactive visualisation tools for supporting taxonomists working practice.

PhD
Doctorate

Level	Doctorate
Student	Dr Robert Kukla
Status	Complete
Part Time	Yes
Years	1999 - 2007
Project Title	A software framework for the microscopic modelling of pedestrian movement
Project Description	A town planner, faced with the task of designing attractive walking spaces, needs a tool that will allow different designs to be compared in terms of their attractiveness as well as their effectiveness. PEDFLOW is an attempt to create such a tool. It is an agent-based, microscopic model of pedestrian flow where virtual pedestrians navigate a virtual environment. On their way towards a goal the agents, representing pedestrians, interact with features of the environment and with other agents. The microscopic, rule-based actions result in an emergent behaviour that mimics that of real pedestrians. Pedestrians are subjected to a multitude of influences when walking. The majority of existing models only focus on a single aspect, typically the avoidance of obstructions or other pedestrians. PEDFLOW uses an implementation of context-mediated behaviour to enable the agents to deal with multiple cause-effect relations in a well-defined and flexible yet highly efficient manner. A variety of mobile and immobile entities can be modelled by objects in an object-oriented environment. The model is informed by an empirical study of pedestrian behaviour and the parameters of the agents are derived from measures of observed pedestrian movement. PEDFLOW’s suitability for pedestrian modelling in the described context is evaluated in both qualitative and quantitative terms. Typical macroscopic movement patterns from the real world such as "platooning" and "walking with a partner" are selected and the corresponding emergent model behaviours investigated. Measures of service (MOS) are defined end extracted from the model for comparison with real world measures. As PEDFLOW was created as an interactive tool to be used in an office environment rather than in a high performance lab, the scalability and performance limitations are explored with regards to the size of the modelled area, the number of modelled pedestrians and the complexity of the interactions between them. It is shown that PEDFLOW can be a useful tool in the urban design process.
Awarding Institution	Edinburgh Napier University
Second Supervisor	Jessie Kennedy
Thesis	A software framework for the microscopic modelling of pedestrian movement