d6.1 analysis of strategic communication priorities and ... · project start date and duration 01...

Cloud LSVA

Large Scale Video Analysis

EUROPEAN COMMISSION

DG Communications Networks, Content & Technology

Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme

Grant Agreement No 688099

D6.1 Analysis of strategic communication priorities

and dissemination plan

Project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (2014 – 2020)

Deliverable no. D 6.1

Dissemination level Public

Work Package no. WP6

Main author(s) Oihana Otaegui and Esther Novo (VICOM)

Co-author(s) ALL

Version Nr (F: final, D: draft) F

File Name D6.1 Analysis of strategic communication priorities

and dissemination plan

Project Start Date and Duration 01 January 2016, 36 months

Ref. Ares(2016)6031940 - 20/10/2016

D6.1 Analysis of strategic communication priorities and dissemination plan

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Document Control Sheet

Main author(s) or editor(s): Esther Novo, Oihana Otaegui

Work area: WP6

Document title: D6.1 Analysis of strategic communication priorities and dissemination plan

Version history:

Approval:

Name Date

Prepared Esther Novo, Oihana Otaegui 30/09/2016

Reviewed Francois Fischer 17/09/2016

Authorised Oihana Otaegui 18/09/2016

Circulation:

Recipient Date of submission

EC 20/09/2016

Cloud LSVA consortium 18/09/2016

Legal Disclaimer

The information in this document is provided “as is”, and no guarantee or warranty is given that the information is fit for any particular purpose. The above referenced consortium members shall have no liability for damages of any kind including without limitation direct, special, indirect, or consequential damages that may result from the use of these materials subject to any liability which is mandatory

due to applicable law. © 2016 by Cloud LSVA Consortium.

Version number

Date Main author Summary of changes

v0.1 06/09/2016 Oihana Otaegui (VICOM)

Table of Contents (ToC) & Vicomtech’s contributions

v0.2 10/09/2016 ALL Individual contributions

v0.3 18/09/2016 VICOM Consolidation of input and document structure

v0.4 29/09/2016 ERTICO Contribution to sections 2-4

v0.5 30/09/2016 Esther Novo (VICOM)

Final edits

v0.6 14/09/2016 Francois Fischer (ERTICO)

Review and comments

F 17/09/2016 Esther Novo (VICOM)

Final version


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Abbreviations and Acronyms

Acronym Definition

EC European Commission

PO Project officer

GA Grant Agreement

WP Work Package

ADAS Advanced Driver Assistance System

EU European Union

IP Intellectual Property

CA Consortium Agreement

SLAM Simultaneous localisation and mapping

OEM Original Equipment Manufacturer

ITS Intelligent Transport System

C-ITS Cooperative ITS

KPI Key Performance Indicator


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Table of Contents

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................ 6

1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 7

1.1 Purpose of Document ............................................................................................................. 7

1.2 Intended audience ................................................................................................................... 7

2 Dissemination strategy and goals .................................................................................................... 8

2.1 Obligation to disseminate results – Visibility of EU funding .................................................... 8

2.2 Disclosing of results and IP protection issues ......................................................................... 9

2.3 Notification procedure ............................................................................................................. 9

Urgency notification procedure ........................................................................................................ 9

3 Dissemination Plan ........................................................................................................................ 10

3.1 Dissemination contents ......................................................................................................... 10

Restricted Access Information ....................................................................................................... 10

3.2 Areas of interest (scientific domains) .................................................................................... 10

3.3 Dissemination target audiences ............................................................................................ 11

3.4 Dissemination channels ........................................................................................................ 12

Scientific and broader audience publications ................................................................................ 12

Conferences and other events, including trade shows and exhibitions ......................................... 13

Workshop and Demonstrations ..................................................................................................... 15

Hackathons and TESTFEST ......................................................................................................... 15

External Advisory Group ................................................................................................................ 15

Internet ........................................................................................................................................... 16

Mass media .................................................................................................................................... 16

3.5 Expected results .................................................................................................................... 17

4 Communication activities and resources ....................................................................................... 18

4.1 Development of the visual identity of Cloud-LSVA ............................................................... 18

4.2 Online communication ........................................................................................................... 18

Blogs and Social Media ................................................................................................................. 18

Media assets .................................................................................................................................. 19

4.3 Dissemination Resources ..................................................................................................... 19

5 Dissemination activities and methodologies .................................................................................. 20

5.1 Dissemination methodology and activities ............................................................................ 20

Methodology .................................................................................................................................. 20

Dissemination log and data repositories ........................................................................................ 20

5.2 Dissemination strategies ....................................................................................................... 21

Temporal issues ............................................................................................................................. 21

Outreach methods ......................................................................................................................... 21

Human resources ........................................................................................................................... 22

6 Results gathering and evaluation .................................................................................................. 24

6.1 Dissemination activities log ................................................................................................... 24

6.2 Data sources ......................................................................................................................... 24


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6.3 Indicators ............................................................................................................................... 24

6.4 Evaluation .............................................................................................................................. 26

7 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................... 27

8 Annexes ......................................................................................................................................... 28

8.1 Annex I. Cloud-LSVA Brochure............................................................................................. 28

8.2 Annex II. Dissemination Activities Log .................................................................................. 30

List of Figures

Figure 1 Dissemination as a continuous process ................................................................................. 22

List of Tables

Table 1 Dissemination KPIs .................................................................................................................. 20

Table 2 Dissemination and Communication Indicators ......................................................................... 25


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Executive Summary

The aim of this project is to develop a software platform for efficient and collaborative semiautomatic

labelling and exploitation of large-scale video data solving existing needs for ADAS and Digital

Cartography industries.

Cloud-LSVA will use Big Data Technologies to address the open problem of a lack of software tools,

and hardware platforms, to annotate petabyte scale video datasets, with the focus on the automotive

industry. Annotations of road traffic objects, events and scenes are critical for training and testing

computer vision techniques that are the heart of modern Advanced Driver Assistance Systems and

Navigation systems. Providing this capability will establish a sustainable basis to drive forward

automotive Big Data Technologies.

As part of the Cloud-LSVA project, WP6 focuses on the potential users of Computer Vision and Video

Analysis related to the different application areas. The targeted audience is the industry, the users

and the research and scientific community. A two-directional approach is applied; on the one hand,

receiving inputs and, on the other hand, by communicating about the project and its findings.

In particular, the overall objective of Task 6.1 is to develop interaction between the research project

and the automotive industry, the users, as well as the research community. A detailed dissemination

plan has been prepared and will be implemented. The dissemination plan identifies the target groups

that can or must be distinguished, the envisaged approaches and the required timing. This is also a

living document that will be updated when new dissemination opportunities occur throughout the

entire duration of the project.

This deliverable has two main purposes:

a) To describe the dissemination strategy of Cloud-LSVA in detail.

b) To compile and report the dissemination activities executed during the lifecycle of the project.


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1 Introduction

Dissemination of the project’s results is a priority of the Cloud-LSVA consortium. Cloud-LSVA

partners are well aware of the impact arising from a well-designed Communication and Dissemination

Strategy, and so this is a key element of the Cloud-LSVA strategic objectives.

This deliverable describes the Dissemination Plan to be developed during the life of the Cloud-LSVA

project. This is therefore an evolving document that will be frequently updated to include the results of

the dissemination activities, the evaluation of the dissemination strategy and the actions taken to

improve it. This document is also a guide for the members of the Cloud-LSVA project, helping them to

identify the different audiences of the different methodologies and dissemination actions, as well as

providing them with tools to collect, structure and present the results of the Cloud-LSVA project.

Finally, this deliverable, in conjunction with the Cloud-LSVA Quality Assurance Plan (D7.5) will

provide a set of indicators and guidelines to evaluate the dissemination strategy, stating those

responsible of each activity and how to address deviation of the proposed objectives as a part of the

continuous improvement process implemented in the Cloud-LSVA project.

1.1 Purpose of Document

This document presents a reference description of the Dissemination Strategy of the Cloud-LSVA

results. With this aim, the contents of the deliverable have been divided into 8 sections:

1. Introduction: A brief description of the deliverable, as well as the purpose of the document

and the intended audience.

2. Dissemination Strategy and Goals: An overview of the strategy to be followed to disseminate

the results and actions of the Cloud project.

3. Dissemination Plan: This section describes the initial dissemination and communication plan,

describing the key messages and scientific areas, the target audience of the Cloud-LSVA

dissemination strategy, the channels, and the expected results of the plan.

4. Communication Activities and Resources: This section also features the visual identity of the

project, as well as the dissemination materials that have been developed for the

dissemination and promotion activities.

5. Dissemination Activities and Methodology: The methodology designed for the successful

dissemination of the Cloud-LSVA project’s results is introduces in this section, as well as the

dissemination strategies to be followed and updated during the project.

6. Results Gathering and Evaluation: A detailed list of indicators to measure the accomplishment

of the dissemination strategy objectives and the impact of the proposed activities is described

here. This section compiles also the guidelines for the periodic evaluation of the

dissemination strategy and the continuous improvement strategy, as stated in the Quality

Assurance Plan (D7.5).

7. Conclusions: A summary of the main conclusions extracted from the analysis of the strategic

communication priorities and the dissemination plan is included.

8. Annexes: Further information related to the dissemination strategy.

1.2 Intended audience

The primary target audience includes the members of the consortium, for whom this document

provides guideline for the communication and dissemination strategy during the project.


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2 Dissemination strategy and goals

As described in the introduction, dissemination activities are an important aspect of the Cloud-LSVA

project. The European Commission has stated repeatedly that dissemination of scientific research

results should be one of the defining principles for Europe’s research landscape. Therefore, a special

effort will be put into communication and dissemination activities during the duration of the Cloud-

LSVA project.

A set of simple recommendations provided by the EC to engage with the public will be the basis of

this Dissemination Plan:

Focus on communicating results rather than processes.

Be interactive by listening and adapting the message regularly according to the response

obtained from the audience and to the expected/obtained results of the activity.

Activities should be selective and targeted in order to maximise impact. Avoid communicating

on matters with little or no interest to the outside world.

Particular emphasis will be put on "local" communication and dissemination activities, using

partners’ contacts, local press, etc. to ensure pan-European approach to dissemination at

both global and local levels.

Tailor communication to different audiences by responding to the issues that matter locally.

Position the project research within a broader socio-economic and policy context, explaining

both the results and their relevance to policy-makers and citizens.

The project success relies on bringing the Cloud-LSVA concepts to the wider market. This wider

market and stakeholders will only learn our work, our ideas and our knowledge if we are effective in

our communication activities. Therefore, it is crucial to have a clear strategy and action plan to reach

the wider market. This action plan is divided in three phases:

i. Awareness building phase (making the project known): to raise awareness on motivation

and reasoning behind the project.

ii. Participation phase (targeting defined user groups): to let identified target groups

understand the concepts of Cloud-LSVA and the achieved results. In this phase,

presentations and examples will be disseminated through the portal and selected events.

iii. Action phase (influencing practices, products and standards): to receive feedback in the form

of demonstration of the results, alternative approaches or new reference implementations.

This phase will include events with the end users, gathering new requirements for Cloud-

LSVA, etc.

2.1 Obligation to disseminate results – Visibility of EU funding

Unless it goes against their legitimate interests, each beneficiary must, as soon as possible,

disseminate its results by disclosing them to the public by appropriate means (other than those

resulting from protecting or exploiting the results), including in scientific publications. This is stated in

Article 29 of the Cloud-LSVA GA – Dissemination of Results — Open Access — Visibility of EU

Funding.

This does not change the obligation to protect results in Article 27, the confidentiality obligations in

Article 36, the security obligations in Article 37 or the obligations to protect personal data in Article 39,

all of which still apply.


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Also according to Article 38 of the GA — Promoting the Action - Visibility of EU Funding – the

beneficiaries have the obligation to promote the action and its results, by providing targeted

information to multiple audiences (including the media and the public) in a strategic and effective

manner. This does not change the dissemination obligations in Article 29, the confidentiality

obligations in Article 36 or the security obligations in Article 37, all of which still apply. Before

engaging in a communication activity expected to have a major media impact, the beneficiaries must

inform the Commission (see Article 52 of the GA).

This obligation has been assumed by the Cloud-LSVA consortium:

All non‐confidential project results shall be published via appropriate channels/media in a

timely manner.

Major activities shall be planned and recorded, including all dissemination and communication

activities.

2.2 Disclosing of results and IP protection issues

According to Article 27 — Protection of Results - Visibility of EU Funding, each beneficiary must

examine the possibility of protecting its results and must adequately protect them, for an appropriate

period and with appropriate territorial coverage, if:

a) the results can reasonably be expected to be commercially or industrially exploited and

b) protecting them is possible, reasonable and justified (given the circumstances).

When deciding on protection, the beneficiary must consider its own legitimate interests and the

legitimate interests (especially commercial) of the other beneficiaries.

The protection of any technologies developed by the Cloud-LSVA consortium partners is fundamental

for the successful exploitation of project outcomes. The management of the generated knowledge will

be performed according to the rules established Grant Agreement and in the Consortium Agreement.

GA and CA will be used as the IPR reference document. The obligation to disseminate the results of

the project will always be subjected to the obligation to protect results, the confidentiality, security

obligations and personal data protection obligations described in the Articles 27, 36, 37 and 39 of the

GA, all of which apply preferably to the obligation to disseminate results. If a beneficiary intends not to

protect its results, it may need to formally notify the Commission before dissemination takes place.

2.3 Notification procedure

A beneficiary that intends to disseminate its results must give advance notice to the other

beneficiaries of at least 45 days, together with sufficient information on the results it will disseminate.

Any other beneficiary may object within 30 days of receiving notification, if it can show that its

legitimate interests in relation to the results or background would be significantly harmed. In such

cases, the dissemination may not take place unless appropriate steps are taken to safeguard these

legitimate interests.

Urgency notification procedure

The notification of any dissemination action according to the previously disclosed notification

procedure is mandatory. For exceptional cases where this period could exceed the deadlines for a

dissemination action, the Steering Committee has approved an Urgency Notification Procedure that

shortens notification and objection periods as follows:

- Notification period: At least 20 days before the publication date.

- Objection period: 15 days after receiving the notification.

In order to apply to this Urgency Procedure, the partner responsible of the dissemination action shall

communicate it to the Coordinator.


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3 Dissemination Plan

3.1 Dissemination contents

The first step in the dissemination plan is to identify the WHAT, i.e., the message or messages to be

disseminated. At this stage, the Cloud-LSVA consortium has identified the following key messages

that need to be disseminated:

Cloud-LSVA is granted by the EC under the H2020 programme.

The project’s goal is to develop a software platform for efficient and collaborative

semiautomatic labelling and exploitation of large-scale video data solving existing needs for

ADAS and Digital Cartography industries.

The Cloud-LSVA consortium is integrated by European companies, research institutions and

universities and experts in different technological and social fields.

The expected results will be the advancement in technology and performance in the key

automotive industry by employing Semi-Automated Video Annotation, Scene Recognition,

Object Recognition and Deep Learning, in conjunction with vehicle sensor data, on a petabyte

scale leveraging the elasticity of computing resources offered by Cloud Computing.

The project’s methodology is based on a survey on existing technologies the development or

integration of different components in a unified system and the validation by conducting tests

in realistic conditions.

Certain milestones reached during the development of the project, or some deliverables

produced.

Participation of the project’s members in conferences or other public events, and publications

describing the project in different media.

Novel scientific ideas, methods, and software libraries to the relevant scientific fields, preferably using open access and open source channels.

Restricted Access Information

It is also important defining which messages should not be disseminated, since not all documents and

knowledge compiled or generated during the project will be available for the public. Special attention

must be given to restrict any dissemination of material classified as confidential. This will be the case

for any document containing personal data, contents subject to intellectual property rights restrictions,

or those that describe key technologies developed and tested by the consortium during the

development of the tests that could compromise the secrecy that could be necessary to obtain

patents and avoid potential competitors to gain advantage.

3.2 Areas of interest (scientific domains)

The dissemination areas of interest for Cloud-LSVA can be divided in three main technology areas

which are: Big Data, ADAS and Cartography. Therefore, the Dissemination plan will be divided into

strategical actions in these three areas, due to the individualities of each of this technologies and

dissemination ways.

These three technology areas are related with different more general technology and research fields:

Computer Vision and Machine Learning: the project’s aim deploying, adapting and

extending existing approaches to extracting meaning from visual data streams will be


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interesting to the computer vision and machine learning communities.

Knowledge modelling and data management: the challenges of integrating data from different sources, building suitable ontologies and evaluating the best data storage and query solutions will be valuable contributions in these fields, particularly when combined with the large scale aspect.

Artificial intelligence

Self-driving cars

Cooperative mobility

Crowdsourcing

Robotics (SLAM related research)

Furthermore, in the non-scientific domain, the insurance industry and legal professions are important

stakeholders to be considered by Cloud-LSVA.

3.3 Dissemination target audiences

The next step in the dissemination plan is to identify TO WHOM, i.e., the target audience. The

following list identifies the stakeholders that may be interested in the Cloud-LSVA project or its

results. We have prioritised the primary communication targets; organisations and individuals with

whom we want to have an intensive dialogue on the content of our research and demonstration

activities:

Other research initiatives covering synergistic subject matter and national or regional funding

bodies;

Private and public institutions in Europe who constitute the route-to-market for the

implementation aspects of our work;

Related enterprises that work in the area of Big Data and Video Analytics;

Research communities in areas of direct, specific relevance to the project; and

Secondary communication targets with whom we plan to have a less intensive dialogue about

outcomes and user experiences include:

Vendors, integrators and sector organisations (other than standards bodies);

The insurance industry and the legal profession;

Wider research community in areas related to our project activities; and

Policy makers at European, national, or regional level.

Our communication priorities will shift during the course of the project:

In year 1 we are most interested in collecting information and knowledge on organisation and

user needs.

By year 2/3 we are most concerned with building momentum for development and

commercial initiatives: communication efforts during the second half of the project execution

will focus on potential commercial development partners.


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3.4 Dissemination channels

Scientific and broader audience publications

We will make all scientific publications stemming from Cloud-LSVA research available through gold

open access in accordance with the call. We will select the most appropriate journal(s) for each

specific research topic. We will also publish in more popular magazines as these publications have a

broader readership. We will select the most appropriate dissemination channel for each specific

paper. The list of targeted journals and conferences include but are not limited to:

Name of the journal or conference Main dissemination aspects

IEEE Big Data Congress How Big Data can solve specific problems in automotive industry

IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing

Advances in the state of the art and practice of cloud computing

Information Processing and Management (journal)

The generation, representation, organisation, storage, retrieval, and use of information in Cloud-LSVA

International Workshop on Content-Based Multimedia Indexing (CBMI)

Semantic video indexing

ACM International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval (ICMR)

Scientific results about the video retrieval engine developed in Cloud-LSVA

IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence

Advances in machine learning to create a semi-automatic annotating tool.

Machine Vision and Applications Application of computer vision to enhance ADAS and Digital Cartography

Journal of Machine Learning Research Semi-automatic video annotation

Computer Vision Theory and Applications VISAPP

Machine learning algorithms for object detection and location in massive video datasets.

IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP)

Scientific results on the visual processing algorithms

IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)

Scientific results on machine learning and video analysis algorithms

International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV)


European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV)


International Journal on Computer Vision Scientific results in Cloud-LSVA that are related to computer vision and visual-SLAM

European Navigation Conference Analysis and interpretation of video to automatically create new digital maps for navigation applications

ITS World Congress Dissemination of Cloud-LSVA project results among international industry and research community.

ITS European Congress Dissemination of Cloud-LSVA project results among European industry and research community.


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IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium Application of Big Data technology in vehicles

IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC)

Alignment between environment sensing and map data, suitability of approach for ADAS and car makers

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems

Scientific results in Cloud-LSVA that have significant impact in ITS

IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

Scientific results in Cloud-LSVA that are related to SLAM-based digital cartography

IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

Scientific results in Cloud-LSVA that are related to SLAM-based digital cartography

IEEE Transactions on Robotics Scientific results in Cloud-LSVA that are related to SLAM-based digital cartography

Standardisation work for ADAS (and more generally speaking, heterogeneous multi-sensors) data

recording aims at getting requirements and feedbacks from automotive OEM, Tiers 1, etc. in order to

establish a new standard. This standard for data recordings (synchronisation, annotations,

metadata...) will facilitate the dissemination and usage of the Cloud LSVA platform when adopted.

In the scope of the project, some partners will integrate vision-based (or other) algorithms within

RTMaps. Besides making the RTMaps’ users community grow up, interested partners will be able to

distribute their algorithms through the RTMaps components store.

Conferences and other events, including trade shows and exhibitions

Over the course of the project, special sessions, workshops and technology demonstrations will be

proposed for inclusion in key scientific conferences in the scientific domains identified. Workshops

and special sessions will feature contributions from project partners but also from other leading

researchers working on similar or related topics. This will ensure that Cloud-LSVA is promoted within

the various communities whilst ensuring that the project keeps abreast of the current state of the art.

Conferences and congresses offer chances to meet in the same place for short periods of time with

different people interested in certain research areas.

The main interest for the dissemination plan is the possibility to submit papers to be presented and

published in the proceedings. Moreover, they offer chances to learn about other related research

projects and make direct contacts with the people that could be interested in Cloud-LSVA or that

could offer useful contributions to the project.

Given the lifespan of the project, it is likely that results will first be published in conferences, and then,

later on, in journals, presenting a more complete description of models and results.

Several editions of a given conference will provide chances to show the progress in different phases

of the project development, get an updated view on the state of the art in relevant areas and contact

parties that could be contacted during the exploitation phase.

Therefore, industry or scientific conferences are excellent platforms to disseminate our findings and

start direct conversations with the audience. We aim to get speaking slots at some of the most

important conferences for the technology areas of the proposal. Some consortium partners are very

active in organising conferences and events.

Consortium partners who will have a presence at international or regional events will represent the

project where appropriate. The list of targeted events includes but is not limited to:

SafetyAssist – Aschaffenburg, Germany


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Tech.AD – Berlin, Germany or Detroit, USA

Automotive Testing Expo – Stuttgart, Germany

ITS World Congress

Mobile World Congress – Barcelona, Spain

During its lifetime of Cloud-LSVA, there will be multiple opportunities to present the progress of the

project and its potential impact at the key ITS events of the year: the ITS Congresses (European

and/or World Congress).

The following ITS Congresses will take place during the project’s lifetime where the project will aim to

present in at least one technical or special interest session:

11th ITS European Congress, Glasgow 2016

23rd ITS World Congress, Melbourne, 2016

12th ITS European Congress, Strasbourg 2017

24th ITS World Congress, Montréal 2017

25th ITS World Congress, Copenhagen 2018

Furthermore, one of the key success factors for the project will be the organisation of events, which

will mobilise the key stakeholders and promote exchanges of ideas and follow-up actions. These

workshops will aim to allow the project stakeholders, innovation experts and policy makers to set the

ground for the creation of partnerships, to showcase better practices and exchange tools and

instruments and to develop schemes for mutual European, national and regional actions and

initiatives. The following workshops will be organised:

Kick-off Workshop. This initial workshop will be mainly devoted to brainstorm requirements

for the Cloud-LSVA design (Month 1), the definition and approval of the draft dissemination

plan, and the launch of the agile methodology for the design phase of the first cycle of the

project.

Design user evaluation workshops: the design and implementation methodology of the first

prototype will be evaluated in specific workshops (to be decided number and objectives).

Workshop for the official handover of the cycle 1. Training and dissemination activities will

be carried out. This workshop will also be used as the official kick-off of the design phase of

the second cycle, so road mapping activities will also be launched for the updates of the

design and architecture of the final Cloud-LSVA framework.

Workshop M24. This workshop will be focused on the commercial and market take-up

activities. Specific target sectors will be contacted and implementations for those sectors will

be presented.

Final workshop M36: Cloud-LSVA market official launching. All potential dissemination

target groups will be invited to present the Cloud-LSVA results. Details about the deployment

phase, road mapping activities, community building activities and demonstration and training

activities will be carried out.

In order to ensure the widest possible outreach towards the project stakeholders that have been

identified in the communication plan, a comprehensive contact database will be compiled from

information gathered during the business planning. The database will be classified according to

thematic areas and activities at member state and regional level.


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Workshop and Demonstrations

Over the course of the project’s lifetime, two workshops will be organised which will mobilise the key

stakeholders and promote exchanges of ideas and follow-up actions. These workshops will aim to

allow the project stakeholders, innovation experts and policy makers to set the ground for the creation

of partnerships, to showcase better practices and exchange tools and instruments and to develop

schemes for mutual European, national and regional actions and initiatives. The first, at the beginning

of the project (kick-off workshop) will be mainly devoted to better understand the key requirements

and needs of the Cloud LSVA platform. At the end of the project, a final workshop will be organised

to be considered as the official market launch of the platform.

In addition to these workshops, an open group will be setup and managed by ERTICO-ITS Europe to

enable the Cloud LSVA project partners and the other relevant ICT automotive stakeholders, to work

together on the video analysis and annotation standardisation, as well as the other common topics of

interest from the Cloud LSVA project.

This open group activity was launched following the workshop held on 24th May 2016 in Munich and

aims at establishing new standards concerning video annotation as well as video coding or analysis.

The recent discussions have raised the issue of the lack of standards in this area, so that this activity

is an opportunity for Cloud LSVA to provide significant long term impact of computer vision.

As another example, the Dutch partners in the Consortium will perform the following dissemination

activities in the Netherlands:

Dissemination and demonstrations: Cloud-LSVA information by Dutch partners (TomTom,

TUE, TASS international) via events and workshops organised in the Netherlands in the

frame of Cooperative mobility and Autonomous Driving.

Promotion of Cloud-LSVA with business partners.

Integration of Cloud-LSVA information in C-ITS papers and vision paper on open data portals.

Hackathons and TESTFEST

The project will also hold a multiday (3-5 days) testing event (TestFest), a face-to-face open meeting

where participants can run interoperability test sessions within approved guidelines. It also includes

debriefing sessions where experts can answer technical questions or solve interoperability issues. In

addition, compliancy and performance checking sessions will be scheduled to complement the

interoperability tests.

Evaluation and dissemination of the scientific advances in large-scale video analytics and scene

understanding can be performed through the planned TESTFEST activities. These will act to inform

directly interested end users from research, industrial and commercial end users both internally and

externally about the achievements of the project and provide a valuable opportunity to elicit direct

input and feedback about the implementations.

External Advisory Group

The primary role of the advisory group is to provide regular and meaningful input and ensure, as far

as practicable, that the project objectives are broadly understood and activities and outcomes

communicated to relevant stakeholders and decision takers.

The Advisory Board will meet along with consortium members at least once a year, at specific project

deliverables or milestones. The AB will also serve as a dissemination path for the Cloud-LSVA

project.


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Members of the Advisory Board:

may complement the technical and user requirements and the architecture,

may advise and/or participate in project dissemination and communication tasks, and

will review the project’s process and results and submit short reports during the project

execution period, at specific project milestones.

Principally the members of the Advisory Board will be drawn from ERTICO’s membership (over 100

entities involved in the Intelligent Transport Sector including Research, Microprocessor and

Embedded Systems Manufactures, Software Development, Public Authorities, Car Manufacturers,

Tier 1 suppliers and OEMs).

Internet

Internet is the main channel to disseminate information nowadays, since a large part of the world

population has access to it through computers and mobile devices.

Setting up a Website is a quick and low cost way to spread updated information worldwide, to

very diverse audiences.

Social networks are an important subset of Internet that facilitates the creation of informal

groups sharing contents created by themselves or other people with common interests.

Mass media

Despite the Internet reducing the role of the traditional mass media (television, radio, newspapers,

magazines, etc.), they are still an important source of news and information to large part of the

population. Their advantage over the Internet is the possibility to better control the geographical and

social scope of the audience. The disadvantage is the high costs required to publish the message.

As an example, ULIM will highlight the research and results of the consortium as they pertain to the

insurance sector. This will be achieved through conference talks, online insurance publications,

insurance specific conferences, national print media and research output. The specific goal is to

encourage insurance companies to actively engage in the research process at EU and national levels.

ULIM will also open a conversation about the implications for the legal protection of data privacy in

emerging automobile technology arising from this project in various professional magazines and

journals together with traditional national print media.


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3.5 Expected results

Another step in the dissemination plan is to identify the WHY, i.e. the goals to achieve when carrying

out dissemination activities. The following goals have been defined in a way that could be

measurable:

To let the general public be aware that there is a project funded by the European

Commission which aims to produce a software platform for efficient and collaborative

semiautomatic labelling and exploitation of large-scale video data solving existing needs for

ADAS and Digital Cartography industries. Cloud-LSVA will use Big Data Technologies to

address the open problem of a lack of software tools, and hardware platforms, to annotate

petabyte scale video datasets, with the focus on the automotive industry. Providing this

capability will establish a sustainable basis to drive forward automotive Big Data

Technologies.

To provide enough information about the organisations integrating the consortium, to

increase confidence on the expertise and capabilities to reach the project goals.

To inform the scientific community about the goals and technologies on which the project is

based, in order to create opportunities for collaboration.

To promote active participation of final users and interested parties, letting them contribute

with requirements, to follow the achievements of the project during its development and to

test the prototypes.

To provide an integrated and common public image of the project, facilitating its recognition

and preparing the market acceptance for the resulting products.

To provide information to the insurance and legal sectors regarding the goals and results of the Cloud-LSVA project. This will include an overview of the project and will also include more general discussions surrounding the results and the potential implications to the auto-insurance sector.


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4 Communication activities and resources

The communication plan includes the overall strategy and procedures for dissemination and

communication. The plan includes the various, specific target groups, the key and customised

message(s) per target group, and the specific mix of communication tools that are used to reach the

dissemination objectives across the different target groups and per target group. The plan takes into

account measures not only for dissemination with stakeholders, but also to actively engage them in

the project and enhance the buy-in of the project results.

4.1 Development of the visual identity of Cloud-LSVA

A visual identity has been developed for the project comprising a logo and style guidelines for on-line

and off-line publications including at least the following applications (see related deliverables D6.2,

D7.5):

The logo and the project website.

PowerPoint presentation and technical report templates.

Project leaflet and other promotional material.

Our project website acts as our dissemination hub, central repository and news broadcast channel for

all public information. We have added web 2.0 “community” elements, but do not expect our website

to become the primary community for those active in our field of interest. In order to have a

conversation, you need to go where your targets go, and they will have established blogs and social

media channels through which their public conversations already take place. They will want to

continue their conversation through those channels. However, from the project website we will link to

those conversations taking place elsewhere.

4.2 Online communication

In order to achieve maximum impact, we choose our communications channels based on where our

communications targets are already having their conversations. We want to go beyond “getting our

message out,” though useful there is a far greater value to be found in a true exchange of opinions.

For this reason, our focus is on establishing two-way communications. From the communications

channels listed below we will for each message and each occasion select the appropriate ones based

on what we want to achieve and go where the relevant conversations are.

Blogs and Social Media

These are probably our most important public communications channels. There are already numerous

public conversations about our subject matter taking place online in e.g.:

LinkedIn groups.

Active blogs or forums on related subjects (the popularity of blogs can change rapidly so

mentioning specific blogs here defeats the purpose).

Playing an active role in these groups is a far more effective way of engaging in conversation than

merely posting something on the project website and hoping that one of our conversation targets will

find it and respond to it. The good thing about using the social web is that it does not require us to

only share fully formed ideas or “complete” pieces of research, we can also share “work-in-progress”

and get feedback that will improve our results. The social web is a very dynamic environment, and the

epicentre of conversation can rapidly move from one blog to another. This means we will have to be

flexible, continuously keep track of where the conversations take place and join them.


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Several individuals working on Cloud-LSVA are professionally very active and very connected on

social media platforms. They and others will play an active role in these public conversations, and we

have allocated time for these efforts in WP6.

Media assets

To facilitate content creation, we are building up a library of re-usable media assets, including

photographs, videos, illustrations, presentation slides, Slidedocs (a document written as slides to be

read rather than presented), templates, etc. We are also creating a number of story lines. The idea

would be not to copy-paste these, as stories will need to be adapted to suit the audience and the

medium, but to use them as guidance when writing blog posts, conference presentations and other

dialogue support material. Assets of sufficient quality will be made publicly available under a Creative

Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Allowing others to use our assets with attribution will increase

project exposure. Media assets will be made available for download from the project website, and

through other appropriate channels (e.g. Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, or SlideShare).

4.3 Dissemination Resources

The following electronic, non-electronic and printed dissemination activities are being developed:

Project identifiers, including a logo, a house style for project reports, presentations, and

posters as well as related templates and guidelines for all partners (see D6.2).

A project leaflet, presenting Cloud-LSVA and its objectives (see Annex I). A flyer provides a

short summary of the project, combining a graphical design that should facilitate its

identification and a text that provides the key ideas about the project. It can be translated to

different languages, facilitating the distribution of each version depending on the target

audience to which has to be delivered. The flyer may require changes along the project, in

case that the message needs to be changed adding updated information, or adapt the design

to a new style.

A project website, providing the opportunity of quick, efficient and extensive dissemination of

project outcomes, both for those directly involved in the project as well as other stakeholders

(http://cloud-lsva.eu/).

Periodic website newsflashes giving information about the project, its activities and output. An

RSS feed will be available for multipliers.

The production of a final brochure, summarising the main project findings, including

translations into several languages.

Non-electronic dissemination channels, such as conferences, workshops and exhibitions

where the results of the project will be presented.


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5 Dissemination activities and methodologies

5.1 Dissemination methodology and activities

Methodology

The Dissemination Plan includes the selection of some indicators aimed at measuring the results of

the dissemination activities.

The initial list of indicators is going to be maintained and reviewed periodically by the coordinator and

all the consortium partners. The plenary conference calls every 2 weeks allows to review the status of

the planned and completed activities, update the indicators and make the necessary adjustments to

ensure the fulfilment of the overall Dissemination Plan goals.

During the periodical revision of the dissemination activities and indicators, some refinements shall be

made to the initial set of indicators, identifying new sub-categories that allowed getting a more

accurate and complete overview of the results.

Table 1 Dissemination KPIs

KPI Phase 1

(M01-M12) Phase 2

(M13-M24) Phase 3

(M25-M36) Total

Number of scientific publications in peer-review journals

0 1 1 2

Number of scientific publications in peer-review International Conferences and

Workshops 1 4 5 10

Number of Cloud-LSVA special sessions/Workshops co-located at

International Conferences 1 1 1 3

Number of events attended representing the Cloud-LSVA project

2 3 4 9

Number of press notes delivered to media 2 2 2 6

Number of references in media (offline and online)

2 2 5 9

Newsletter distributions (online) 1 2 2 5

Number of unique visitors in the website 50 300 500 850

Number of tweets/posts in the partners’ social media channels

12 64 50 126

Dissemination log and data repositories

During the development of the Cloud-LSVA project, a spreadsheet will be shared among all partners

keeping an updated summary of all dissemination activities and results (see Annex II). More detailed

description of the activities is maintained using Podio (the project management web tool used by the

partners) and a copy of the files related with each activity will be collected in Podio.


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5.2 Dissemination strategies

The term strategy refers to the way in which the resources can be used to reach the goals along the

timeframe of the project, in a coordinated way that ensures an efficient usage of the resource to

maximize the achievement of the goals.

Temporal issues

A first factor that should guide the planning of dissemination activities is their temporal distribution

along the timeframe of the project.

Certain dissemination activities will have a continuous scope, being available at any time (for

instance, the project’s Website). Other activities will be arranged only for short periods of time, usually

associated with specific project milestones or external events.

Since the information generated by the project members will increase (in quantity and quality) as the

project advances, the amount of effort and the expected results should be scaled up during the

development of the project. As a general strategy, the effort and resources will follow certain phases:

In the early phase of the project, the goal is to promote basic public awareness of the project

existence and goals.

In intermediary stages, people already aware of the project may require updates to know

which milestones have been reached and how is the project progressing towards the initial

goals.

In the final phase, the main goal is to publicise the results of the project, and in case of

success reaching the basic goals the dissemination activities would aim to increase the

awareness of the public and scientific communities, and prepare the market for the adoption

of the Cloud-LSVA technologies.

Outreach methods

According to the role of the project members towards the audience, we can identify a variety of

methods that should be considered when deciding the best strategy for each activity:

Passive: When information is published in public media waiting for the audience to discover it.

o For example: a website is typically a passive resource that is published in a server,

that the audience has to find by means of a search engine of following links.

o Another example: Publishing an article or note in a magazine is another way to

expect that some people will know about the project, giving them the chance to look

for additional information in case that they are interested.

Proactive: An alternative method is to reach the target audience looking actively for the

people or organisations matching predefined criteria and deliver messages directly to them.

o This approach requires identifying the audience, finding and collecting their contact

details (e-mails or postal address) and delivering a customised message (e-mails or a

document or printed material).

Reactive (or interactive): independently on how the first contact is established, when the

audience requests for more information, the project members should be able to react

delivering the appropriate answer.

o This can be facilitated offering to the final users’ ways to contact directly (by e-mail,

phone, participating in surveys or in person).

o In some cases, the dialog could involve multiple people, like discussion forums where


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any user can read, post or reply comments from any other.

Viral: A special method to disseminate information is letting the audience share it with other

people. In certain cases, it is possible to design the messages to increase the users’ wish to

share them; in others, it is a matter of inviting users to share the information and facilitating

the distribution to other people through different means (e-mail, social networks, etc.).

o For example: Social networks are a good way to find people with certain interests,

invite them to join a group and expect that they will share the information with their

friends.

o Another example: When final users are invited to participate in workshops (to collect

or validate requirements) or to test prototypes, we can expect that they will spread the

information about the project with other people with similar profiles (especially if they

are members of organisations).

Figure 1 Dissemination as a continuous process

Human resources

5.2.1.1 Dissemination Coordinator

As described in the DoA and in Deliverable D7.1, ERTICO is the leader of WP6 – Dissemination and

Exploitation. Therefore, a representative from ERTICO, Francois Fischer, has been assigned as the

Dissemination Coordinator, who will work in close collaboration with the Project Coordinator, Dr.

Oihana Otaegui, and the Innovation Manager, Ms. Esther Novo. The main functions of the

Dissemination Coordinator are:

To supervise the implementation of the dissemination plan, keeping an overview of the

activities, resources and participants.

To keep track of the ongoing dissemination activities, delegate and synchronise tasks.

To ensure that messages match the predefined goals and constraints.

To take care that the format of the messages and the channels used to distribute them are

adequate to reach the target audience.

To collect and evaluate the results of the dissemination activities.


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5.2.1.2 Internet Coordinator

A representative from ERTICO has been appointed as Internet Coordinator (Andre Toth). The main

functions of the Internet Coordinator are:

To maintain the project Website, updating its contents, publishing news and including

documents and multimedia material.

To maintain the quality and of the contents and the consistency of the design with the

project’s identity standards.

To monitor the status of the server, to ensure its optimal performance and solve any problems

that may arise.

To manage incoming messages from the Website users, addressing each one to the partner

who could better reply to them.

To create and manage accounts for the project in social networks, updating news and

replying to messages from the users.

To monitor the statistics of access to the Website.

To keep the Dissemination Coordinator informed of any relevant information about the

project’s Internet resources and deliver periodical reports.

5.2.1.3 Events Coordinator

A representative from ERTICO has been appointed as Internet Coordinator (Francois Fischer). The

main functions of the Events Coordinator are:

To gather information about events (congresses, conferences, outreach activities, etc.) that

could be relevant to the project, and facilitate that all project members are aware of them and

share some basic description.

To coordinate the decisions about the participation of project members in different events

(attending the event, publishing papers, making presentations, participating in round tables,

etc.), and select a specific responsible for each event who will manage the preparation,

participation and report.

To maintain updated information about all events in the Events Database.

To facilitate the logistics (travel and accommodation) and provide the necessary marketing

material (flyers, brochures, posters, etc.).

To maintain an Events Calendar highlighting deadlines (call for abstracts, call for papers,

enrolment, etc.) and ensure that the partners are aware of them.

To keep the Coordinator informed of information about relevant events and the participation of

the project members, and deliver periodical reports.

5.2.1.4 Publications Coordinator

This role will be carried out by the Technical Manager, Dr. Marcos Nieto (VICOM). The main functions

of the Publications Coordinator are:

To identify opportunities to publish articles about the project, and coordinate with the

members of the project the production of contents to be published.

To maintain the quality and of the contents and the consistency of the design with the

project’s identity standards.

To verify that the contents to be published contain only public information and no confidential

information is disclosed.

To verify and protect the intellectual property rights of any material included in the

publications (pictures, sounds, illustrations, etc.).

To keep the Dissemination Coordinator informed of any relevant information about the

project’s publications and deliver periodical reports.


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6 Results gathering and evaluation

6.1 Dissemination activities log

The dissemination coordinator will maintain a log describing the main actions executed and any

relevant information that facilitates to follow a historical and contextual description of the execution of

the dissemination plan. The log will include information about the publications, participation in events,

appearance in mass media, etc. and will be shared on Podio with all the Cloud-LSVA partners (see

Annex II).

One of the goals of the log is to learn from the experience in order to continuously improve and reuse

knowledge acquired during the implementation of the plan, and to refine it during the project

development, helping to produce new versions of the dissemination plan.

6.2 Data sources

In order to measure the effectiveness of the execution of the dissemination plan, the following

techniques will be used:

Questionnaires and surveys: Asking to a representative sample of population a structured

set of questions would allow extrapolating basic indicators about the awareness about the

project goals and status, and their opinion about it.

Web search engine results: Querying for relevant keywords (such as the project’s name, or

the main words describing it) would provide a good idea about how many results are related

to the project and which information is found by those who search for the project in the Web.

Configuring automatic searches (for instance, using Google Alerts) could help to compare the

evolution of the search results in different moments.

Web audience statistics: The statistics collected by the Web server of by third party services

(like Google Analytics), provide a rich description of the people visiting the project Website,

including basic demographics and others reports enabling to understand how the people

arrived to the website and how they navigated within its contents.

Social network statistics: Some social networks provide ways to analyse the spread of

information and the participation of its members in the distribution of information about the

Cloud-LSVA project.

Citations: The number of citations from research publications is another indicator of the

results obtained.

References in public media: The number and type of references published in general media

about the project and its activities could provide a good idea about the public interest in the

Cloud-LSVA project.

6.3 Indicators

The indicators are measurable values that allow checking the degree of accomplishment of the

objectives of the dissemination plan, and evaluate the effectiveness of the dissemination actions.

The following table shows the initial set of indicators and the goals that will be tracked during the

lifetime of the Cloud-LSVA project by all the partners (see also Section 5.1 of this deliverable and

D7.5 for more information).


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Table 2 Dissemination and Communication Indicators

Indicator

VIC

OM

CE

A

DC

U

INT

EL

ER

TIC

O

IBM

INT

EM

P

TA

SS

TO

MT

OM

TU

E

UL

IM

VA

LE

O

TO

TA

L

Events attended

Workshops organised

Abstracts (Total)

Papers

Presentations

Posters

Demos

Technical articles

Citations

Newsletter

Subscriptions

Press notes

Media references

References in other sites

Liaison activities

Standardisation activities

Public Website (Visits)

Unique visitors

Posts in Social N. (Total)

Twitter tweets

Facebook posts

LinkedIn discussion posts

Youtube - Loaded videos

Podcasts

Followers in Social Networks (Total)

Twitter followers

LinkedIn group members


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6.4 Evaluation

During the execution of the dissemination plan, the Dissemination Coordinator in close collaboration

with the Cloud-LSVA Coordinator will collect the data from the different sources and monitor the main

indicators.

Taking in account the general objectives and the specific situation in the project, the coordinator will

identify specific needs that could influence the execution of the plan, and together with the rest of the

team decide the corrective actions if needed.

At the end of the project, a global evaluation will be made, summarising the dissemination activities

performed and the results achieved.


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7 Conclusions

This document presents the internal guidelines that will be followed for the appropriate management

of the dissemination and communication activities within the Cloud-LSVA project. This deliverable

complements the information provided in D7.1 Project Management Plan, which is the handbook on

project management for Cloud-LSVA, including the project structure, the management structure and

procedures, an introduction to the quality assurance plan, as well as the list of critical risk and

mitigation strategies.

Some of the sections in this document will be updated throughout the lifetime of the project, as

previously indicated, in order to appropriately coordinate all the dissemination activities, maximise the

impact of the project, identify the strategic communication priorities, undertake corrective actions if

needed in order to meet the dissemination plan, identify and manage risks.

The overall dissemination plan of the project described in this deliverable is aligned with the

information already provided in the Description of Action for Cloud-LSVA (as per Grant Agreement

number 688099).


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8 Annexes

8.1 Annex I. Cloud-LSVA Brochure


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8.2 Annex II. Dissemination Activities Log


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d6.1 analysis of strategic communication priorities and ... · project start date and duration 01...

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