Ina Blümel

A 3D shape benchmark for retrieval and automatic classification of architectural data

When drafting new buildings, architects make intensive use of existing 3D models including building elements, furnishing, and environment elements. These models are either directly included into the draft or serve as a source for inspiration. To allow efficient reuse of existing 3D models, shape retrieval methods considering the specific requirements of architects must be developed. Unfortunately, common 3D shape benchmarks which are used to evaluate the performance of retrieval algorithms are not well suited for architectural data. First, they incorporate models which are not related to this domain, and second and even more important, the provided classification schemes usually do not match an architects intuition regarding their notion of design and function. To overcome these drawbacks, we present a freely downloadable shape benchmark especially designed for architectural 3D models. It currently contains 2257 objects from various content providers, including companies specialized on 3D CAD applications. All models are classified according to a scheme developed in close cooperation with architects taking into account their specific requirements regarding design and function. Additionally, we show retrieval results for this benchmark using unsupervised and supervised shape retrieval methods and discuss the specific problems regarding retrieval of architectural 3D models.

The PROBADO project: approach and lessons learned in building a digital library system for heterogeneous non-textual documents

The PROBADO project is a research effort to develop and operate advanced Digital Library support for non-textual documents. The main goal is to contribute to all parts of the Digital Library work flow from content acquisition over indexing to search and presentation. While not limited in terms of supported document types, reference support is developed for classical digital music and 3D architectural models. In this paper, we review the overall goals, approaches taken, and lessons learned so far in a highly integrated effort of university researchers and library experts. We address the problem of technology transfer, aspects of repository compilation, and the problem of inter-domain retrieval. The experiences are relevant for other project efforts in the nontextual Digital Library domain.

Demonstration of user interfaces for querying in 3D architectural content in PROBADO3D

The PROBADO project is a research effort to develop Digital Library support for non-textual documents. The main goal is to contribute to all parts of the Digital Library workflow from content acquisition over semi-automatic indexing to search and presentation. PROBADO3D is a part of the PROBADO framework designed to support 3D documents, with a focus on the Architectural domain. This demonstration will present a set of specialized user interfaces that were developed for content-based querying in this document domain.

The Quest for Research Information

Research information, i.e., data about research projects, organisations, researchers or research outputs such as publications or patents, is spread across the web, usually residing in institutional and personal web pages or in semi-open databases and information systems. While there exists a wealth of unstructured information, structured data is limited and often exposed following proprietary or less-established schemas and interfaces. Therefore, a holistic and consistent view on research information across organisational and national boundaries is not feasible. On the other hand, web crawling and information extraction techniques have matured throughout the last decade, allowing for automated approaches of harvesting, extracting and consolidating research information into a more coherent knowledge graph. In this work, we give an overview of the current state of the art in research information sharing on the web and present initial ideas towards a more holistic approach for boot-strapping research information from available web sources.

Enrichment and Preservation of Architectural Knowledge

In the context of the EU FP7 DURAARK project (2013–2016), inter-disciplinary methods, technologies and tools have been researched and developed, that support the Long Term Preservation of semantically enriched digital representations of built structures. The results of the research efforts include approaches of semi-automatically deriving building models from point cloud data sets acquired from laser scans and the integration and overlay of such representations with explicit Building Information Models (BIM). We introduce novel ways for the further semantic enrichment of such hybrid building models with contextual data and vocabularies from external resources using Linked Data (LD) and the recognition relevant features and building components. A special focus of the research reported here lies on strategies and policies for their long term archival, information retrieval based on rich semantic metadata and the use of such archival systems in research and commercial scenarios. We introduce a set of prototypical, open-source tools implementing these features that have been integrated into a modular preservation framework called the “DURAARK Workbench”.

Efficient retrieval of 3D building models using embeddings of attributed subgraphs

We present a novel method for retrieval and classification of 3D building models that is tailored to the specific requirements of architects. In contrast to common approaches our algorithm relies on the interior spatial arrangement of rooms instead of exterior geometric shape. We first represent the internal topological building structure by a Room Connectivity Graph (RCG). To enable fast and efficient retrieval and classification with RCGs, we transform the structured graph representation into a vector-based one by introducing a new concept of subgraph embeddings. We provide comprehensive experiments showing that the introduced subgraph embeddings yield superior performance compared to state-of-the-art graph retrieval approaches.

Information supply beyond text: non‐textual information at the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) – challenges and planning

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the work being done at The German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) to make non‐textual information, for example three dimensional objects, more easily accessible. The goal is to create workflows and develop tools that allow academic libraries to treat this data in the same way as textual documents within the library processing chain. This implies content‐based indexing and the offering of new kinds of interfaces for searching and displaying results.Design/methodology/approach – The work of TIB on non textual information is described as well as DataCite and its launch in December 2009.Findings – That the launch of Datacite ensures that this agency will take global leadership for promoting the use of persistent identifiers for datasets, to satisfy the needs of scientists. It will, through its members, establish and promote common methods, best practices, and guidance.Practical implications – The work of TIB and the launch of Datacite will en...

Integrating multimedia repositories into the PROBADO framework

In this paper, we describe a digital library initiative for non-textual documents. The proposed framework will integrate different types of content-repositories - each one specialized for a specific multimedia domain - into one seamless system and will add features such as automatic annotation, full-text retrieval and recommender services to non-textual documents. Two multimedia domains, 3D graphics and music, will be introduced. The repositories can be searched using both textual (metadata-based) and non-textual retrieval mechanisms (e.g. using a complex sketch-based interface for searching in 3D-models or a query-by-humming interface for music). Domain-specific metadata models are developed and workflows for automated content-based data analysis and indexing proposed.

Taming the wilderness of open research information

In this paper, we describe a process developed within a student project that can be applied for harvesting, extracting and linking research information from available web sources, e.g., web pages of researchers and institutions. The data is transformed according to Linked Open Data principles and linked with other sources to boot-strap a research information discovery system for an exemplary scientific community.

CoScience - Gemeinsam forschen und publizieren mit dem Netz

Der Arbeitsalltag von Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern hat sich in den letzten Jahren dramatisch verandert. Forschen, Schreiben und Publizieren sind mittlerweile stark durch netzbasierte Anwendungen gepragt. Das digitale Zeitalter aber hat nicht nur neue technische Werkzeuge hervorgebracht, sondern auch neue Wege eroffnet, um Wissen zu generieren und zu verbreiten. Dies gilt sowohl innerhalb der akademischen Welt als auch uber diese hinaus. Das Arbeiten mit dem Netz stellt unsere bisherigen etablierten wissenschaftlichen Praktiken in Frage. Forschung wird zunehmend vernetzt, kollaborativ, multimedial, trans- bzw. interdisziplinar durchgefuhrt. Das vorliegende Handbuch beschreibt diese sich herausbildenden wissenschaftlichen Praktiken. Ziel der Autoren war es dabei, ein praxisnahes und leicht verstandliches Handbuch zu schreiben.