The construction industry has consistently suffered the highest number of fatalities among all human involved industries over the years. Safety managers struggle to prevent injuries and fatalities by monitoring at-risk behavior exhibited by workers and equipment operators. Current methods of identifying and reporting potential hazards on site involve periodic manual inspection, which depends upon personal judgment, is prone to human error, and consumes enormous time and resources. This research presents a framework for automatic identification and analysis of potential hazards by analyzing spatio-temporal data from construction resources. The scope of the research is limited to human-equipment interactions in outdoor construction sites involving ground workers and heavy equipment. A grid-based mapping technique is developed to quantify and visualize potentially hazardous regions caused by resource interactions on a construction site. The framework is also implemented to identify resources that are exposed to potential risk based on their interaction with other resources. Cases of proximity and blind spots are considered in order to create a weight-based scoring approach for mapping hazards on site. The framework is extended to perform ``what-if'' safety analysis for operation planning by iterating through multiple resource configurations. The feasibility of using both real and simulated data is explored. A sophisticated data management and operation analysis platform and a cell-based simulation engine are developed to support the process. This framework can be utilized to improve on-site safety awareness, revise construction site layout plans, and evaluate the need for warning or training workers and equipment operators. It can also be used as an education and training tool to assist safety managers in making better, more effective, and safer decisions.

Mechanisms controlling the productivity, abundançe and taxonomic composition of phytoplankton in tropical Lake Malawi were examined by monitoring phytoplankton dynamics in 8 regions covering the length of the lake (560 km) over a 10-12 month period, and relating these dynamics to spatio-temporal changes in thermal structure, nutrient availability, and meteorological conditions. In addition, nearshore benthic photosynthetic rates were measured in 7 different months.Spatial and temporal changes in areal photosynthetic rates were due almost entirely to changes in the efficiency of light utilization by the phyroplankton community. An evaluation of potential factors which might influence tight utilization indicates that nutrient availabitity is the most important. Most of the photosynthetic N and P demand is met by internal recycling within the upper 200 m, and therefore spatio-temporal variation of phytoplankton photosynthetic rate is closely related to changes in mixing regime. It is shown that the dominant meteorological factors responsible for changes in the mixing regime were solar radiation and windspeed. A comparison with previous photosynthesis data for Lake Malawi indicates that windspeed is a dominant factor controlling interannual variability. Shallow areas of the lake were more productive than deep areas, due to more intense upwelling and more efficient internal nutrient recycling in shallow waters. Within the littoral zone, benthic photosynthetic rates were very high, accounting for 14% to 28% of total net photosynthesis within the shallow southeast arm. Phytoplankton biomass was not correlated with photosynthetic rate, indicating that biomass loss processes were important in controlling biomass variability. Changes in phytoplankton taxonomic composition were related to changes in mixing regime. Cyanobacteria and chlorophytes were dominant throughout much of the study period, but diatoms made up a significant proportion of total biomass during periods of increased turbulence and nutrient availability. An analysis of phytoplankton surface area : volume ratios revealed that organism shape and size are important determinants in species succession. Previous studies have emphasized the low variability of phytoplankton biomass and photosynthetic rates in tropical lakes, relative to temperate lakes. An inter-lake comparison reveals that this tenet does not apply to large lakes. Fluctuations in the mixing regime of large tropical lakes have an effect on phytoplankton variability similar in magnitude to the effect of fluctuating solar irradiance in large temperate lakes.

The studies on content-based video indexing and retrieval aim at accessing video content from different aspects more efficiently and effectively. Most of the studies have concentrated on the visual component of video content in modeling and retrieving the video content. Beside visual component, much valuable information is also carried in other media components, such as superimposed text, closed captions, audio, and speech that accompany the pictorial component. In this study, semantic content of video is modeled using visual, auditory, and textual components. In the visual domain, visual events, visual objects, and spatial characteristics of visual objects are extracted. In the auditory domain, auditory events and auditory objects are extracted. In textual domain, speech transcripts and visible texts are considered. With our proposed model, users can access video content from different aspects and get desired information more quickly. Beside multimodality, our model is constituted on semantic hierarchies that enable querying the video content at different semantic levels. There are sequence-scene hierarchies in visual domain, background-foreground hierarchies in auditory domain, and subject hierarchies in speech domain. Presented model has been implemented and multimodal content queries, hierarchical queries, fuzzy spatial queries, fuzzy regional queries, fuzzy spatio-temporal queries, and temporal queries have been applied on video content successfully.

Place branding is commonly understood as the application of marketing and commercial ideas, strategies, measurements and logic to the realm of places such as cities, regions and nations. Nevertheless, place branding is also understood as the locus where political activities – imbued with political impact and political effects – appear and affect the soft and hard infrastructures of urban agglomeration and other spatial environments. In this regard, by performing an analysis that helps unpack the multiple characters and impacts of political structures and processes in relation to place branding activities, the present dissertation aims to offer a conceptualization of the political dimension of place branding. By drawing on the critical assessment of the academic literature on place branding and on a series of studies about the branding processes in the region of Romagna and in the Greater Stockholm, the present dissertation further specifies an alternative conceptual framework (i.e. ecological politics) that suggests how place branding should be seen an empirical and theoretical political apparatus that acts, in praxis, based on an emerging, multifaceted and spatio-temporal enfolding of politics. More specifically, the ecological politics of place branding is characterized by four main aspects: the unfolding of a biopolitical ecology around place-branding practices; the ideological appropriation of place-branding processes; the positioning through politicized actions between the interest groups; and finally place-branding as a process of policy-intervention. Finally, on more general level, the present dissertation, by recognizing the political activities and efforts of place branding as crucial elements to be analyzed, makes the case for a more explicit, complex and manifold political analysis of the political dimension of place branding, which allows attention to be given to the impact that branding processes, practices and activities have on cities, regions and nations / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Manuscript.</p><p> </p>

La recherche développée dans cette thèse introduit une approche qualitative pour représenter et raisonner à partir d'entités spatiales dans un espace géographique à deux dimensions. Les patrons de mouvements entre entités dynamiques sont catégorisés à partir d'un modèle qualitatif de relations topologiques entre une ligne orientée et une région, et de relations d'orientation entre deux lignes orientées, respectivement. Les mouvements qualitatifs sont dérivés à partir de relations spatio-temporelles qui caractérisent des entités dynamiques conceptualisées comme des points ou des régions dans un espace à deux dimensions. Cette architecture de raisonnement permet de dériver des configurations de mouvements basiques dérivées à partir d'entités statiques et dynamiques. L'approche est complétée par une qualification de ces configurations à partir d'expressions du langage naturel. Les compositions de mouvements sont étudiées tout comme les transitions possibles dans des cas de données incomplètes. Les tables de compositions sont également explorées et permettent d'étendre les possibilités de raisonnement. Le modèle est expérimenté dans le contexte de l'analyse de trajectoires aériennes et maritimes. / The research developed in this thesis introduces a qualitative approach for representing and reasoning on moving entities in a two-dimensional geographical space. Movement patterns of moving entities are categorized based on a series of qualitative spatial models of topological relations between a directed line and a region, and orientation relations between two directed lines, respectively. Qualitative movements are derived from the spatio-temporal relations that characterize moving entities conceptualized as either points or regions in a two-dimensional space. Such a spatio-temporal framework supports the derivation of the basic movement configurations inferred from moving and static entities. The approach is complemented by a tentative qualification of the possible natural language expressions of the primitive movements identified. Complex movements can be represented by a composition of these primitive movements. The notion of conceptual transition that favors the exploration of possible trajectories in the case of incomplete knowledge configurations is introduced and explored.Composition tables are also studied and provide additional reasoning capabilities. The whole approach is applied to the analysis of flight patterns and maritime trajectories.

Por causa da grande quantidade de dados de trajetórias producidos por dispositivos móveis, existe um aumento crescente das necessidades de mecanismos para extrair conhecimento a partir desses dados. A maioria dos trabalhos existentes focam nas propriedades geometricas das trajetorias, mas recentemente surgiu o conceito de trajetórias semânticas, nas quais a informação da geografia por baixo da trajetória é integrada aos pontos da trajetória. Nesse novo conceito, trajetórias são observadas como um conjunto de stops e moves, onde stops são as partes mais importantes da trajetória. Os stops e moves são computados pela intersecção das trajetórias com o conjunto de objetos geográficos dados pelo usuário. Nessa dissertação será apresentada uma solução alternativa a descoberta de stops, com a capacidade de achar lugares de interesse que não são esperados pelo usuário. A solução proposta é um método de clusterização espaço-temporal, baseado na velocidade, para ser aplicado em uma trajetória. Foram comparadas duas abordagens diferentes com experimentos baseados em dados reais e mostrado que a computação de stops usando o conceito de velocidade pode ser interessante para várias applicações. / Because of the large amount of trajectory data produced by mobile devices, there is an increasing need for mechanisms to extract knowledge from this data. Most existing works have focused on the geometric properties of trajectories, but recently emerged the concepts of semantic trajectories, in which the background geographic information is integrated to trajectory sample points. In this new concept, trajectories are observed as a set of stops and moves, where stops are the most important parts of the trajectory. Stops and moves have been computed by testing the intersection of trajectories with a set of geographic objects given by the user. In this dissertation we present an alternative solution with the capability of finding interesting places that are not expected by the user. The proposed solution is a spatio-temporal clustering method, based on speed, to work with single trajectories. We compare the two different approaches with experiments on real data and show that the computation of stops using the concept of speed can be interesting for several applications.

L'analyse et l’interprétation de contenus visuels et plus particulièrement la vidéo est un domaine de recherche de plus en plus attractif en raison du nombre important d'applications telles que la vidéo-surveillance, le résumé de films, l'indexation, les jeux vidéo, la robotique et la domotique. Dans cette thèse nous nous intéressons à la détection et à la reconnaissance d'actions humaines dans des séquences vidéo. Pour la partie détection des actions, nous avons introduit deux approches basées sur les points d'intérêts locaux. La première proposition est une méthode simple et efficace qui vise à détecter les mouvements humains ensuite contribuer à extraire des séquences vidéo décrivant des actions importantes. Afin d'atteindre cet objectif, les premières séquences vidéo sont segmentées en volumes de trames et groupes de points d’intérêts. Dans cette méthode, nous nous basons sur le suivi du mouvement des points d'intérêts. Nous avons utilisé, dans un premier lieu, des vidéos simples puis nous avons progressivement augmenté la complexité des vidéos en optant pour des scènes réalistes. Les jeux de données simples présentent généralement un arrière-plan statique avec un Seul acteur qui effectue une seule action unique ou bien la même action mais d'une manière répétitive. Nous avons ensuite testé la robustesse de la détection d'action proposée dans des jeux de données plus complexes réalistes recueillis à partir des réseaux sociaux. Nous avons introduit une approche de détection d'actions efficace pour résoudre le problème de la reconnaissance d'actions humaines dans les vidéos réalistes contenant des mouvements de caméra. Le mouvement humain est donc segmenté d'une manière spatio-temporelle afin de détecter le nombre optimal de trames suffisant pour effectuer une description vidéo. Les séquences sont décrites au moyen de descripteurs spatio-temporels. Nous avons proposé dans cette thèse deux nouveaux descripteurs spatio-temporels basés sur le suivi de la trajectoire des points d'intérêts. Les suivis et la description vidéo sont effectués sur les patchs vidéo qui contiennent un mouvement ou une partie d'un mouvement détecté par la segmentation réalisée lors de l'étape précédente. Nous nous sommes basés sur le descripteur SURF non seulement pour sa précision et mais surtout pour la rapidité. Le premier descripteur proposé est appelé ST-SURF basé sur une nouvelle combinaison du (SURF) et du flot optique. Le ST-SURF permet le suivi de la trajectoire des points d'intérêts tout en gardant les informations spatiales, pertinentes, provenant du SURF. Le deuxième descripteur proposé dans le cadre de cette thèse est un histogramme du mouvement de la trajectoire (HMTO). HMTO est basé sur la position ainsi que l'échelle relative à un SURF. Ainsi, pour chaque SURF détecté, nous définissons une région du voisinage du point d'intérêt en nous basant sur l'échelle. Pour le patch détecté, nous extrayons le flot optique d'une manière dense. Les trajectoires de mouvement sont ensuite générées pour chaque pixel en exploitant les composantes horizontale et verticale de flot optique (u, v). La précision de la description de la vidéo proposée est testée sur un ensemble de données complexes et un plus grand ensemble de données réalistes. Les descripteurs de vidéo proposés sont testés d'une manière simple puis en les fusionnants avec d'autres descripteurs. Les descripteurs vidéo ont été introduits dans un processus de classification basé sur le sac de mots et ont démontré une amélioration des taux de reconnaissance par rapport aux approches précédemment proposés dans l'état-de-l ‘art. / Due to increasing demand for video analysis systems in recent years, human action de-tection/recognition is being targeted by the research community in order to make video description more accurate and faster, especially for big datasets. The ultimate purpose of human action recognition is to discern automatically what is happening in any given video. This thesis aims to achieve this purpose by contributing to both action detection and recognition tasks. We thus have developed new description methods for human action recognition.For the action detection component we introduce two novel approaches for human action detection. The first proposition is a simple yet effective method that aims at detecting human movements. First, video sequences are segmented into Frame Packets (FPs) and Group of Interest Points (GIP). In this method we track the movements of Interest Points in simple controlled video datasets and then in videos of gradually increasing complexity. The controlled datasets generally contain videos with a static background and simple ac-tions performed by one actor. The more complex realistic datasets are collected from social networks.The second approach for action detection attempts to address the problem of human ac-tion recognition in realistic videos captured by moving cameras. This approach works by segmenting human motion, thus investigating the optimal sufficient frame number to per-form action recognition. Using this approach, we detect object edges using the canny edge detector. Next, we apply all the steps of the motion segmentation process to each frame. Densely distributed interest points are detected and extracted based on dense SURF points with a temporal step of N frames. Then, optical flows of the detected key points between two frames are computed by the iterative Lucas and Kanade optical flow technique, using pyramids. Since we are dealing with scenes captured by moving cameras, the motion of objects necessarily involves the background and/or the camera motion. Hence, we propose to compensate for the camera motion. To do so, we must first assume that camera motion exists if most points move in the same direction. Then, we cluster optical flow vectors using a KNN clustering algorithm in order to determine if the camera motion exists. If it does, we compensate for it by applying the affine transformation to each frame in which camera motion is detected, using as input parameters the camera flow magnitude and deviation. Finally, after camera motion compensation, moving objects are segmented using temporal differencing and a bounding box is drawn around each detected moving object. The action recognition framework is applied to moving persons in the bounding box. Our goal is to reduce the amount of data involved in motion analysis while preserving the most important structural features. We believe that we have performed action detection in the spatial and temporal domain in order to obtain better action detection and recognition while at the same time considerably reducing the processing time...

Por causa da grande quantidade de dados de trajetórias producidos por dispositivos móveis, existe um aumento crescente das necessidades de mecanismos para extrair conhecimento a partir desses dados. A maioria dos trabalhos existentes focam nas propriedades geometricas das trajetorias, mas recentemente surgiu o conceito de trajetórias semânticas, nas quais a informação da geografia por baixo da trajetória é integrada aos pontos da trajetória. Nesse novo conceito, trajetórias são observadas como um conjunto de stops e moves, onde stops são as partes mais importantes da trajetória. Os stops e moves são computados pela intersecção das trajetórias com o conjunto de objetos geográficos dados pelo usuário. Nessa dissertação será apresentada uma solução alternativa a descoberta de stops, com a capacidade de achar lugares de interesse que não são esperados pelo usuário. A solução proposta é um método de clusterização espaço-temporal, baseado na velocidade, para ser aplicado em uma trajetória. Foram comparadas duas abordagens diferentes com experimentos baseados em dados reais e mostrado que a computação de stops usando o conceito de velocidade pode ser interessante para várias applicações. / Because of the large amount of trajectory data produced by mobile devices, there is an increasing need for mechanisms to extract knowledge from this data. Most existing works have focused on the geometric properties of trajectories, but recently emerged the concepts of semantic trajectories, in which the background geographic information is integrated to trajectory sample points. In this new concept, trajectories are observed as a set of stops and moves, where stops are the most important parts of the trajectory. Stops and moves have been computed by testing the intersection of trajectories with a set of geographic objects given by the user. In this dissertation we present an alternative solution with the capability of finding interesting places that are not expected by the user. The proposed solution is a spatio-temporal clustering method, based on speed, to work with single trajectories. We compare the two different approaches with experiments on real data and show that the computation of stops using the concept of speed can be interesting for several applications.

L’incertitude inhérente à notre appréhension des systèmes de peuplement passés, engendrée par les modes de collecte ou d’enregistrement des données, mais aussi par nos modes de catégorisation et de réflexion spatio-temporelles sur cette information, conditionnent fortement les hypothèses et les résultats qui en découlent. Cette thèse, menée dans le cadre du projet PaléoSyr/PaléoLib, présente une chaîne de raisonnement méthodologique exploratoire destinée à révéler et formaliser par des méthodes d’analyse spatiale divers niveaux de connaissance et d’incertitude inhérents aux bases de données archéologiques, tout en proposant des alternatives destinées à s’écarter du conditionnement imposé par les catégories spatio-temporelles rigides telles que les périodes ou les limites de zones de prospection. Celle-ci est structurée en deux axes majeurs : le premier a pour objectif de clarifier et de synthétiser les niveaux d’information inhérents à une vaste base de données couvrant la Syrie occidentale et le Liban de -9600 av. J.-C. à nos jours, en adaptant des méthodes d’aide à la décision et d’analyse spatio-morphologique, et par des procédés de géovisualisation dans une optique exploratoire. Le second axe explore et évalue localement les impacts des divers niveaux spatio-temporels que révèlent les données par des méthodes d’analyse géostatistique et de statistique spatiale, et des niveaux d’incertitude sur notre perception du changement spatio-temporel, sur un espace situé au Nord-Ouest de la Syrie. Divers modèles des « passés possibles » du peuplement élaborés à l’aide de la logique floue seront proposés, en fonction des divers niveaux spatio-temporels et d’incertitude envisagés. / The uncertainty inherent to our comprehension of past settlement systems, generated by our ways of collecting or recording data but also by our spatio-temporal categorisation and reflexion on this information, greatly condition hypotheses and results. This thesis was carried out in the framework of PaleoSyr/PaleoLib project, and develops a methodological and exploratory reasoning chain whose aim is to reveal and formalise with spatial analysis several levels of knowledge and uncertainty which are inherent to archaeological databases. It proposes alternatives to try and avoid the conditioning imposed by rigid spatio-temporal categories such as periods or survey zones. It is organised in two major axes : the first one intends to clarify and synthetize several levels of information which are inherent to a big database covering Occidental Syria and Lebanon from -9600 B.C to the present, by adapting decision making and spatio-morphological methods, and through geovisualisation processes in an exploratory dimension. The second axis explores and evaluates locally the impacts of the various spatio-temporal and uncertainty levels revealed by data with geostatistics and spatial statistics on our perception of spatio-temporal change, on a test zone situated at the North-West of Syria. Several models of the “possible pasts” of settlement with the help of fuzzy logic are then proposed, depending on the various spatio-temporal and uncertainty levels taken into account.

Le cycliste de haut niveau a comme objectif principal : gagner et optimiser sa performance. Une question souvent soulevée par le sportif et son encadrement est le lien entre l’asymétrie, la performance et la santé. Dans ce contexte nous analysons dans un premier temps l’adaptation cinématique et musculaire de la jambe dominante chez le cycliste professionnel au cours du test incrémental jusqu’à épuisement proposé par la FFC. Les résultats ont montrés que l’incrément depuissance modifie la coordination musculaire avant d’impacter la cinématique articulaire. Ensuite nous proposons une nouvelle méthodologie afin d’étudier l’évolution cinématique de l’asymétrie spatio-temporelle au cours de ce test. Les résultats ont permis de démontrer que le niveau d’asymétrie est plus important hors du plan sagittal, ce qui peut entraîner un risque de blessures, principalement au genou. Enfin, nous examinons l’influence de la fatigue sur le niveau d’asymétriearticulaire et musculaire par l’intermédiaire d’une modélisation numérique musculo-squelettique sur une population de cyclistes de haut niveau. Les résultats ont permis de démontrer que l’asymétrie musculaire est différente entre l’analyse électromyographique et musculosquelettique. De plus, le côté dominant présente un niveau plus élevé concernant les forces musculaires et de réactions intersegmentaires. D’un point de vue générale, les méthodologies employées dans cemanuscrit comportent une application directe pour le cyclisme. Cependant, elles peuvent être réutilisées dans d’autres activités, sportive ou non, d’un point de vue performance et prévention des blessures. / The high-level cyclist main goal is to win and optimize his performance. A question often raised by the athlete and his coaching is the link between asymmetry, performance and health. In this context, we analyze the kinematic and muscular adaptation of the dominant leg of professional cyclist during the incremental test to exhaustion of the FFC. The results showed that the increase of power output modifies the muscular coordination before impacting joint kinematics. Then, wepropose a new methodology to study the kinematic evolution of the spatio-temporel asymmetry during this test. The results showed that asymmetry level is greater outside the sagittal plane, which can creat a risk of injuries mainly for the knee. Finally, we examine the influence of fatigue on the level of muscular asymmetry though musculosketal modeling on a population of high level cyclists. Results showed that muscle asymmetry is different between electromyographic and musculoskeletal analysis. Moreover, the dominant side has a higher level of muscle strength and intersegmental reactions. From a general point of view, the methodologies used in this manuscipt have a direct application for cycling. However, they can be reused in other activities, from a performance and injury prevention viewpoint.