Scanning the field

Citation

Papademetriou, R.C. (1998), "Scanning the field", Kybernetes, Vol. 27 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.1998.06727caa.001

Scanning the field

Scanning the field

Multidisciplinary applications of information systems

During the past 20 years, there has been a considerable growth of interest in problems and applications of information processing systems. This interest has created an increasing need for advanced theoretical and computational methods for use in the design of robust information processing systems. Several of these methods have matured to the point where they have started to yield interesting practical results. While in this special issue we cannot encompass the entire field of information systems, the small collection of papers spanning a wide range of methods and application areas, it does present some of the latest developments in this fast moving field.

The first paper, by Karras, Karkanis and Mertzios, entitled "Information systems based on neural network and wavelet methods with application to decision making, modelling and prediction tasks", presents a new approach to building robust information systems, based on wavelet and neural network methods, and applies it successfully to quality control decision making as well as to signal prediction.

The second paper by Kyriakopoulos presents an example of a multi-disciplinary information processing system combining sensors, global communications, information processing and data fusion from diverse sources, and issues of data integrity and security. It is entitled "Monitoring and verification of the comprehensive nuclear test-ban treaty" and describes the objectives and architecture of the system and some operational experiences from the experimental system.

Manikas and Dowlut, in their paper "The use of differential geometry in array signal processing", propose a unified differential geometric framework for a rigorous analysis of the subspace-based (superresolution) direction finding algorithms. The authors lay special emphasis on the concept of the array manifold (fundamental to this class of algorithms) and its significance in determining the detection, resolution, direction-of-arrival estimation and ambiguity performance of an array.

The paper by Papademetriou takes a very fundamental look at the exploitation of some powerful information theoretic tools for inferring from incomplete information. It is entitled "Data processing using information theory functionals" and presents an overview of the principles of maximum entropy (ME), minimum cross entropy (MCE) and mutual information (MI) with applications in the areas of moment-based image reconstruction, spectral estimation and image restoration respectively.

The final paper by Tsoubelis, entitled "Distance as a tool for surface definition", presents an approach to modelling and visualising implicit (i.e. lacking an analytic description) surfaces based on computer graphics techniques. The method is demonstrated with the construction and subsequent visualisation of generalised weighted Voronoi tessellation using as control points simple geometric objects.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those authors, referees and editorial staff, for their efforts in making this publication possible.

Thanks also go to the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of the University of Portsmouth, for graciously recognising the creation of such an issue as a scholarly activity.

Finally, acknowledgement is due to the Department of Informatics of the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB) and the Hellenic Mathematical Society, who organised the 3rd Hellenic European Conference on Mathematics and Informatics (HERMIS '96) at AUEB on 26-28 September 1996, where some of the material presented in this issue was first discussed.

R.C. PapademetriouGuest editor (Part I)

Rallis C. Papademetriou was educated at the University of Patras (Greece) and Imperial College (London). He started teaching, as Assistant Lecturer, at the University of Patras (Chair of Information Theory) in 1979 and in 1987, after three years with Imperial College, he joined the Engineering Faculty of the University of Portsmouth, where he is currently a Senior Lecturer in Signal Processing and Communications. He is also founding manager of the Special Institute on Signal Processing and Applications (SISPA). His research interests include statistical signal processing and applications of information theory (recently in financial engineering). He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR) and the International Association of Financial Engineers (IAFE).