Le Québec vit un vieillissement marqué de sa population et doit faire face aux problèmes que cela engendre. Cette situation soulève des enjeux sociaux et économiques liés à la santé comme l'augmentation des problèmes chroniques de santé en fin de vie, le maintien de la qualité des soins à la population et plus généralement le financement du domaine de la santé. Le Centre de recherche sur les habitats intelligents (CRHI) de l'Université de Sherbrooke cherche à développer une solution technologique socialement acceptable à ces enjeux. Les travaux qui y sont faits visent à favoriser l'autonomie de personnes atteintes de troubles cognitifs afin de leur permettre de demeurer à domicile le plus longtemps possible. Cette recherche doctorale porte spécifiquement sur l'utilisation des technologies de l'habitat intelligent pour soutenir le travail coopératif entre les professionnels de la santé, les intervenants sociaux et les proches aidants. On y aborde la problématique du travail "même lieu/temps différents" dans l'équipe hétérogène sous l'angle du travail coopératif assisté par ordinateur (TCAO). Un collecticiel asynchrone distribué dans l'habitat intelligent a été développé à titre de preuve de concept. Des activités de communication, de coordination et de production des intervenants ont été scénarisées afin de démontrer le fonctionnement du prototype. Le collecticiel C4C intègre notamment des outils de travail éprouvés comme le système de mesure de l'autonomie fonctionnelle (SMAF) qui est utilisé pour déterminer et suivre le niveau de service à offrir à une personne en perte d'autonomie. Notre recherche a permis d'élaborer : - une infrastructure distribuée de services sous l'approche par réseau de pairs pour un habitat intelligent ; - un modèle de gestion de l'information dans une perspective historique et spatiale intérieure tridimensionnelle ; - un modèle de gestion de la coopération en mode "pousser de l'information" basé sur le contexte de travail. Ensemble, ces contributions structurent et définissent le mode de travail dans l'équipe de soins et de maintien à domicile. En facilitant la coopération dans l'habitat intelligent, notre recherche vise la continuité accrue des soins pour permettre à plus de personnes souffrant de limitations cognitives ou physiques de vivre à la maison dans leur communauté.

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.

Le problème de la stéréovision à partir de caméras multiples calibrées capturant une scène fixe est étudié depuis plusieurs décennies. Les résultats présentés dans le benchmark de stéréovision proposé par Strecha et al., attestent de la qualité des reconstructions obtenues. En particulier, les travaux du laboratoire IMAGINE, mènent à des résultats visuellement impressionnant. Aussi, il devient intéressant de calibrer des scènes de plus en plus vastes, afin d'appliquer ces algorithmes de stéréovision de façon optimale. Trois objectifs essentiels apparaissent : - La précision de la calibration doit être améliorée. En effet comme pointé par Yasutaka Furukawa, même les benchmarks de stéréovision fournissent parfois des caméras bruitées à la précision imparfaite. Un des moyen d'améliorer les résultats de stéréovision est d'augmenter la précision de la calibration. - Il est important de pouvoir prendre en compte les cycles dans le graphe des caméras de façon globale. En effet la plupart des méthodes actuelles sont séquentielles, et dérivent. Ainsi ces méthodes ne garantissent pas, pour une très grande boucle, de retrouver cette configuration cyclique, mais peuvent plutôt retrouver une configuration des caméras en spirale. Comme on calibre des réseaux d'images, de plus en plus grand, ce point est donc crucial. - Pour calibrer des réseaux d'images très grands, il convient d'avoir des algorithmes rapides. Les méthodes de calibration que nous proposons dans la première partie, permettent de calibrer des réseaux avec une précision très proche de l'état de l'art. D'autre part elle permettent de gérer les contraintes de cyclicité par le biais d'optimisations linéaires sous contraintes linéaires. Ainsi ces méthodes permettent de prendre en compte les cycles et bénéficient de la rapidité de la programmation linéaire. Enfin, la recherche en stéréovision étant arrivée à maturité, il convient de s'intéresser à l'étape suivante, à savoir la reconstruction spatio-temporelle. La méthode du laboratoire IMAGINE représentant l'état de l'art en stéréovision, il est intéressant de développer cette méthode et de l'étendre à la reconstruction spatio-temporelle, c'est-à-dire la reconstruction d'une scène dynamique capturée par un dôme de caméras. Nous verrons cette méthode dans la seconde partie de ce manuscrit

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.

Intro In this practice-led research project I investigate relations between structures of coercion in the built world and sculptural language. The aim of my project is to present a series of exhibitions and situations that examine architectures of bodily discipline as practices of form/space composition and spatial manipulation. Such architectures range from the delineation of public space to the choreography of bodies by urban design. The project engages the viewer in a dialogue around art and the spatio-visual codes that embody what Michel Foucault regarded as the coercive powers of modern 'carceral culture'. I research a range of studio and workshop, site and gallery based processes contextualised by contemporary notions of sculpture, materiality and art practice. I work from a position derived from the writings on art by the minimalist sculptor Robert Morris (1966, 1970), Rosalind Krauss (1977, 1979) and Hal Foster (1996), which stress the experience of the viewer as an integral part of the art work and emphasise the nature of art work in 'real' spaces. Proposed Project To investigate relations between 'structures of coercion' in the built world and sculptural language through a series of exhibitions and situations (installations at ARIs, public collaborative works, studio documentations) that examine architectures of bodily discipline as practices of form/space composition and spatial manipulation. The proposed artworks will engage the viewer in a dialogue around art and the spatio-visual codes that exist in urban space. Main objective The main objective of this research project is to: • Identify new ways of understanding spatio-visual codes of discipline in the city through sculpture practice.

Thèse (M.Sc.)--Université Laval, 2003. / Bibliogr.: f. [123]-132. Publié aussi en version électronique.

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>

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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.