The Nature Inspired Creative Design network brings together people from three different main areas: Nature and Biology, Art and Design, and Science and Computing. It aims to establish a forum for crossfertilization between the disciplines, within the overall topic of adopting nature inspired approaches to creative design. Its members explore a wide range of subjects, including evolution, growth and development, emergence and self organization, robustness, natural structures, and human design behaviour and performance1. Nature Inspired Creative Design is a research cluster under the 'Designing for the 21st Century' program. It is sponsored by the British Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The network brings together people from a variety of disciplines to exchange ideas about art, design, nature and science [Schnier06]. This chapter presents the background and ideas of the network, predominantly from a computational viewpoint. It also presents some of the result of the initial one-year funded phase of the network. 2. NATURE INSPIRED CREATIVE DESIGN Nature is the ultimate designer. Every species, every individual, can be seen as the result of an implicit design process. At the same time, the results of this design process perform extremely well, in whatever measure of performance one might want to use. This even often includes aesthetical measures – there are many extremely beautiful species on earth. The main goal of this network is to explore what can be learned from Nature for the human design and engineering activities. However, this is not a one-way process. The nature of the funding puts an emphasis on applications to design, and this chapter will maintain this emphasis. However, there is potential for transfer of ideas between all the groups participating in the network (Figure 1). Without this, the network would be one-sided and of questionable use to perhaps the majority of the members. 2.2 Promises of Nature Inspired Design The design process is becoming increasingly complex and demanding, and will continue to do so into the 1 This is an extended version of a paper originally published at ACDM 2006 (IP-CC, Bristol) future. Individual designs are composed of more and more parts; designs are subject to more and more constraints and objectives; at the same time the rapid technical innovations and shorter lifespans increase the demand for design. By adopting nature inspired methods, we hope to solve some of these problems. Nature inspired methods have a number of important potentials, as described in the following sections. 2.2.1 Produce better designs Comparing natural and artificial designs, it is clear that natural designs often have a number of advantages. For example, natural designs are usually: • Resource efficient: Through continuous adaptation, natural designs have become parsimonious in their use of resources. • Resilient to faults: Artificial designs often fail when individual components break. Natural designs, on the other hand, usually show graceful degradation: a small injury is usually not fatal to an animal, and the death of a number of individuals will not seriously endanger a colony of insects. • Adaptable: Natural designs are usually able to adapt to the environment; sometimes this happens as part of the development process from genetic code to individual, sometimes this happens during the lifetime as physical change, or as behavioural change. • Extremely varied: Natural design processes have produced individuals that span a massive range of scales, complexities, shapes and forms. They can be found in a vast range of environments. Nature inspired processes can help designers to create very novel designs. 2.2.2 Create better design processes By taking inspiration from nature's methods, we will be able to find processes that are Figure 1: Nature Inspired Creative Design Network • More scalable: Nature has developed systems that show a very high complexity: human nervous systems, colonies of insects, large ecosystems are all examples. Very often, these systems are composed of a large number of elements with complex interactions. Designing artificial systems of similar complexity is usually a very difficult process. • Better parallelizable: In natural evolution, there is no top-down design process – every species evolves on its own, and individual parts of a design (e.g. the beak of a Darwin Finch) can often be optimized fairly much independently of other parts. • More reliable: A very simple system consisting of 10 components interacting in 10 different ways has the state space of 10,000,000,000 possible states. A designer using conventional tools simply does not have the time to search the entire state space. Natural systems have developed various emergent methods for searching the sate space of the system. • More efficient. Natural design processes are unsupervised processes – no conscious designer is involved. Instead, processes of evolution, emergence, self-organization and interaction with the environment determine the outcome. Together with the increasing availability of fast computer clusters, nature inspired approaches have the potential to provide efficient alternatives to labour-intensive manual design processes. 2.2.3 Create better design tools Nature inspired design tools have the potential to • Allow the user to search a larger design space: designers are often limited to a small subset of the total design space, for a variety of reasons: lack of knowledge, lack of time, lack of design methods. Nature inspired methods may be able to help both producing designs in a larger search space, and evaluating these designs. • Provide better support: systems that know about the design process, and learn the user's preferences, will be able to provide better support to the designer. Nature inspired techniques can provide both languages to describe designs, as well as the learning algorithms. 2.2.4 Provide knowledge about human design activities • Humans are a part of nature. They are also a result of an evolutionary process – our artistic perception, and our creative abilities, are formed by this process. By studying aspects of human design activities, we can learn more about human and animal creative processes. Human creativity is a many-faceted process, and attempts at creating creative computer programs can benefit from emulating one or more of these aspects. Human creativity is also of course a result of human evolution. • Capture design knowledge. Human designers have developed a large pool of knowledge about design, both explicit and implicit. This knowledge can be applied in other disciplines, for example in data visualization. • Gain insights into ethical aspects of design. Natural life has survived many drastic changes, in terms of climate changes, natural disasters, or rapid evolutionary changes. Studying natural design dynamics may give us some ideas about possible interactions between the natural and human designed worlds. 3. AREAS OF INTEREST With about 40 members with a variety of backgrounds actively participating in the network, there are nearly as many subjects discussed. The following sections attempt to categorise and summarise these subjects.

Knowledge acquisition is becoming an integral part of the manufacturing industries, which rely on domain experts in various phases of product life cycle including design, analysis, manufacturing, operation and maintenance. It has the potential to enable knowledge reuse, however, poorly managed knowledge can cause information loss and inefficiency. If technical documentation is managed well in the manufacturing industries, intended piece of knowledge can easily be located, used and reused for purpose and as a result, the corresponding industry can be benefited. Some examples of technical documentation are design specification, operating manual and maintenance manual. Model-based Documentation (MBD) is a documentation approach that uses model to provide structure to the data of the documents. MBD can be thought of as a way to better organize knowledge thereby knowledge identification and retrieval become easier, faster and efficient. In this paper, we propose MBD and its extension as a potential solution to overcome the issues involved in the typical technical documentation approaches.

Bioenergy is a renewable energy generated from biomass, while biofuel is a hydrocarbon fuel that is produced from biomass. Recently, bioenergy and biofuel projects are encouraged and supported by many governments and organizations in various ways such as providing incentives, technical supports, information, and decision support tools. Economic model is one of the decision support tools, which helps to estimate the costs and earnings involved in a project. It is constructed with various elements such as concepts, relations, logics, constants and equations. In current economic models, all the elements are hard coded into some programming code, which makes the model less reusable and extendable. To address the issue, we present an ontology-based economic model in this paper. In particular, we have leveraged the Semantic Web technologies to represent the knowledge about the bioenergy and biofuel economics and inferred the equations and other values required for economic calculations. The case study has been carried out in two of the INTERREG Projects and found promising results.

Creativity is often described as the intelligent misuse or rearrangement of existing knowledge, and is meaningless without the context and associated expectations provided by that knowledge. We outline a model of problem-solving creativity based on the generalisation of cases and discuss how sub-symbolic computational intelligence techniques might be used to implement it. We propose a novel measurement for creativity based on the idea of creative potential or the ‘degree of misuse’ of existing concepts contained in a case base.

One of the sustainable solutions to the depleting fossils fuels is bioenergy, which is a renewable energy generated from biomass, and biofuel is a hydrocarbon fuel that is produced from biomass. Recently, bioenergy and biofuel projects are encouraged and supported by many governments and organizations in various ways such as providing incentives, technical supports, information, and decision support tools. The economic model is one of the decision support tools, which helps to estimate the costs and earnings involved in a project. It is constructed with various elements such as concepts, relations, logics, constants, and equations. In current economic models, all the elements are hard-coded into some programming code, which makes the model less reusable and extendable. To address the issue, we present an ontology-based economic model in this paper. In particular, we have leveraged the Semantic Web technologies to represent the knowledge about the bioenergy and biofuel economics and inferred the equations and other values required for economic calculations. The case study has been carried out in two of the INTERREG Projects and found promising results.

Bioenergy is a renewable energy and is generated by treating biomass with various technologies.Depending upon the nature of biomass, it is more suitable for one technology than others, and they can further be treated with other technologies.Hence, the biomass follows a pathway of technologies, and the pathway is called bioenergy pathway.Currently, bioenergy pathways are created manually: either by manually sketching or by creating the data manually and generating diagrams from the data.Manually generated pathways are prone to human errors.A solution to this is creating semantic pathways automatically.In this paper, we present the bioenergy ontology to generate semantic pathways automatically.In particular, we have leveraged the Semantic Web technologies to represent the bioenergy knowledge and inferred the pathways.The case study has been carried out in one of the INTERREG Project and found promising results.

Bio energy is a renewable energy and a solution to the depleting fossil fuels. Bio energy such as heat, power and bio fuel is generated by conversion technologies using biomass for example domestic waste, root crops, forest residue and animal slurry. Pyrolysis, anaerobic digestion and combined heat and power engine are some examples of the technologies. Depending on the nature of a biomass, it can be treated with various technologies giving out some products, which can be further treated with other technologies and eventually converted into the final products as bio energy. The pathway followed by the biomass, technologies, intermediate products and bio energy in the conversion process is referred to as bio energy pathway. Identification of appropriate pathways optimizes the conversion process. Although there are various approaches to create or generate the pathways, there is still a need for a semantic approach to generate the pathways, which allow checking the consistency of the knowledge, and to share and extend the knowledge efficiently. This paper presents an ontology-based approach to automatic generation of the pathways for biomass to bio energy conversion, which exploits the definition and hierarchical structure of the biomass and technologies, their relationship and associated properties, and infers appropriate pathways. A case study has been carried out in a real-life scenario, the bio energy project for the North West of Europe (Bioen NW), which showed promising results.

This paper introduces the Next-TELL independent open learner model which is constructed based on data from a range of sources. An example is presented for a university course, with the learner model built from the main activities undertaken during the course. Use of the Next-TELL open learner model over a five week period is described for this group of students, suggesting that independent open learner models built from multiple sources of data may have much to offer in supporting students’ understanding of their learning, and could potentially be used to encourage greater peer interaction.

This paper draws on visualisation approaches in learning analytics, considering how classroom visualisations can come together in practice. We suggest an open learner model in situations where many tools and activity visualisations produce more visual information than can be readily interpreted.

The Suburban Birmingham project aimed to allow the exploration of a collection of resources originally presented through a website on a touch table. In this paper we will explore some of the issues illustrated by this project involving the manipulation and sharing of resources on multi-user applications in public spaces, including ownership, affordances, and managing and interpreting gestures in different contexts.

The CASAM project aims to provide a tool for more efficient and effective annotation of multimedia documents through collaboration between a user and a system performing an automated analysis of the media content. A critical part of the project is to develop a user interface which supports both the user and the system working co-operatively and asynchronously. In this paper we discuss the work undertaken, the proposed user interface and underlying interaction issues which drove its development.

In a cooperative mixed-initiative system, timely and effective dialogue between the system and user is important to ensure that both sides work towards producing the most effective results, and this is affected by how disruptive any interruptions are as the user completes their primary task. A disruptive interaction means the user may become irritated with the system, or might take longer to deal with the interruption and provide information that the system needs to continue. Disruption is influenced both by the nature of the interaction and when it takes place in the context of the user's progress through their main task. We describe an experiment based on a prototype cooperative video annotation system designed to explore the impact of interruptions, in the form of questions posed by the system that the user must address. Our findings demonstrate a preference towards questions presented in context with the content of the video, rather than at the natural opportunities presented by transitions in the video. This differs from previous research which concentrates on interruptions in the form of notifications.

The CASAM project targets the concept of computer-aided semantic annotation of multimedia content. An integrated system comprised of multimedia analysis, reasoning and human-computer interaction research and technologies allows users to semantically annotate multimedia documents combining user input with system-initiated annotation. The CASAM prototype implementation has finished and the final system will be extensively evaluated over the next few months. This paper reports on the project objectives, underlying methodologies, features and modules involved in the system processes, as well as the future work planned for this research endeavor.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning, IDEAL 2007, held in Birmingham, UK, in December 2007. The papers include topical sections on learning and information processing, data mining and information management, bioinformatics and neuroinformatics, agents and distributed systems, financial engineering and modeling, and agent-based approach to service sciences.

Context-awareness can greatly enhance the usability of mobile devices by making it possible for users to continue with other activities without having to pay too much attention to the device. At the same time context-aware applications can provide timely support for user activities by responding to changes in the user’s state and acting accordingly. We describe our work on developing a generic context awareness architecture that is being deployed in a gallery space to enhance learner engagement with the gallery exhibits. Our system makes use of contextual information to determine what content should be displayed on the device. Users can also navigate this content by explicitly changing their context in the dimensions of physical location and dwell time. Visitors have the opportunity to physically interact with the abstract information layer that is overlaid on the gallery space. The system also actively encourages movement in the gallery by identifying links between paintings. We describe our architecture, implementation, and the design challenges faced in deploying this system within a gallery.

The MOBIlearn project aims to develop a re-usable architecture for delivering mobile learning experiences. A key component of this architecture is a context-awareness subsystem that is intended to tailor the content and options made available to a learner, depending on their current situation, preferences, and learning history. The context awareness subsystem has been developed alongside a hierarchical model of context, and has been subjected to formative evaluation. With reference to our context model, preliminary user trials, and input from museum staff, we describe the planned deployment of this system in an art museum learning scenario.

The MOBIlearn project aims to develop a re-usable architecture for delivering mobile learning experiences. A key component of this architecture is a context-awareness subsystem that is intended to tailor the content and options made available to a learner, depending on their current situation, preferences, and learning history. The context awareness subsystem has been developed alongside a hierarchical model of context, and has been subjected to formative evaluation. A major input to the context awareness system comes from an ultrasound tracking system that has been developed at the University of Birmingham. This tracking system is being deployed along with the context awareness system to support learners in a visit to an art museum. The system is intended to offer not only content but also recommendations of collaborative activities based on physical and contextual proximity We describe our system and outline our plans for evaluation in the museum setting.