During the design and implementation of the system, some experimentation will often be necessary before a decision is adopted. In addition there will be staged exchanges of results between the technological/computational and historical activities. Such arrangement allows the continuous flow of information between diverse activities and ensures their seamless integration.
The modular nature of the system will enable a methodical integration approach. Following implementation the ink and support components will be tested and evaluated separately before the integration phase during which all of the system modules will be connected and the user interface tested. Integration of the historical results derived by the system will complete its evaluation.
NOESIS is an interdisciplinary research project. Computational and historical activities are carried out within the four phases with milestones defining the completion of the exchange of information between the research activities.
The NOESIS project follows the following phases in its planned execution:
1. Requirement and data gathering
2. System design and implementation
3. Integration and system evaluation
4. Dissemination and exploitation
The phases of the project consist of:
Phase 1 - Requirement and data gathering
. User requirements and manuscript selection
. Manuscript photography
This phase sets the scope of the work to be done in terms of the user and technical requirements specification, and makes explicit the evaluation criteria by which the work will be measured as it progresses. The requirements specification will make use of potential user feedback to determine the functionality of the desired user interface. The activity will identify representative manuscripts for digitisation and decide their use in the project for modelling and evaluation.
Phase 2 - System design and implementation
. Ink profiling
. Support profiling
. Database user interface
The focus will be on the implementation of the ink and support models. Both computational and historical research is carried out and the results are integrated to deliver (a) the ink and support computational models (b) the ink and support databases integrating historical and image-based properties of the manuscripts.
As the target program is aimed at historians and manuscript researchers, the team will use a rigorous prototyping/test and refine procedure in order to ensure that the requirements of the scholars are met and also ensure that the user interface of the system is acceptable and easy to use for the targeted user audience.
Phase 3 - Integration and system evaluation
. System integration and testing
. Historical data integration and system evaluation
Following completion of phase 2 partners will install the NOESIS software and the individual components will be used for the interpretation and authentication of manuscripts. The software evaluation will follow the evaluation criteria specified in Phase 1. The evaluation will focus on the performance of the components in a controlled environment and the functionality provided against the original requirements. During this phase historical researchers will also integrate the findings on manuscripts of different libraries and therefore deliver an integrated study on the ink and supports used in the Mediterranean region. Final evaluation of the system will be performed in one of the library whose manuscripts have not been used for modelling and refining of the system. In addition in order to test the potential use of the system to other forms of artefacts we will evaluate the performance of the system on religious icons.
Phase 4 - Exploitation, Training and Dissemination
. Project management
. Training
. Dissemination and exploitation
Whilst dissemination activity will have been undertaken throughout the project, recommendations for exploitation will be addressed during phase 3.