Do you have an interest in analyzing Big Data, collected in real life, mobile context? Nokia Research Center Lausanne and its academic Swiss partners have recently completed a Data Collection Campaign in the Lake Geneva region. Data from smartphones of almost 200 participants was collected in the course of 1+ year.
The Mobile Data Challenge (MDC) releases the Lausanne data for the research community. The challenge provides you an opportunity to analyze a comprehensive and relatively unexplored data set including rich social and geographic information. Selected entries will be invited to participate in a workshop organized in conjunction with the Pervasive 2012 conference.
Recent MDC news:
April 27, 2012:
MDC entries have been allocated to the PC members. Review is now ongoing.
March 5, 2012:
Detailed instructions for submitting the challenge entries have been allocated to all participants.
February 22, 2012:
PC members for MDC are announced. The list of members can be accessed through this link.
January 11, 2012:
- MDC data have been released to the challenge participants according to the schedule. Teams contributing to more than 400 challenges received the data and have now started the MDC related analysis
December 17, 2011:
· The challenge was received extremely well by the appropriate research communities since its launch in early November. As a consequence, around 700 individual researchers registered to the MDC. Altogether almost 500 challenge tasks were registered
(click here for more information on the MDC statistics)
· The final workshop of the MDC has been now announced also on the Pervasive 2012 web page: http://pervasiveconference.org/2012/workshops.php
Description of the MDC:
The MDC comprises two alternative tracks: Open Track and Dedicated Track. In the Open Track, you are given the opportunity to approach the data set from an exploratory perspective. You can propose your own Challenge task, which matches with your own research interests and background. You can e.g. discover hidden behavioural patterns through statistical techniques, focus on more methodological contributions related to data mining or develop novel ways for data visualization.
For all cases, the description of your methods and/ or the findings of your analysis will be shared in the challenge in the form of a short paper, as well as any relevant accompanying material that you wish to share with the research community - such as analytics or visualization tools.
MDC schedule:
- November 2011: Launch of the Call for the Challenge
- December 7th 2011: Registration deadline for participation
- Week1, 2012 (at the latest): Data is released
- April 15th 2012: Deadline for final submission of the Challenge contributions
- May 18th 2012: Acceptance notifications,and review feedback for challenge participants
- June 3rd 2012: Deadline to deliver camera ready papers (to the proceedings of the “Mobile Data Challenge by Nokia” workshop)
- June 18th 2012: “Mobile Data Challenge by Nokia” workshop: Newcastle,UK (in connection with Pervasive 2012, the 10th International Conference on Pervasive Computing)
How to participate?
Researchers with academic affiliation are eligible to enroll in the Challenge. However, researchers having an employment relationship with industrial or commercial companies may not participate in the MDC. Please refer to further details in the MDC Terms and Conditions.
Prospective participants to the Dedicated Track do not have to submit a proposal, but will agree to participate in at least one of the Tasks of the Track and submit the results according to the MDC schedule.
The registration process has been launched in the beginning of November. The deadline for registering and submitting proposals is 7th December, 2011. If you are interested in joining the mailing list or if you want to request further information about the MDC, please send us an email (mobiledata.challenge2012 [at] nokia.com).
Click here to access more detailed instructions for the participation, as well as the MDC Terms and Conditions document to be signed by participating individuals.
Evaluation and awards:
The open challenge entries will be evaluated according to the standard scientific criteria, including novelty, quality of contribution/documentation, etc., based on the feedback from the program committee of the MDC workshop. The dedicated tracks will be evaluated in comparison to ground truth data.
The best challenge entries in both tracks will be awarded prizes.
Open track:
1st prize: 3000€, 2nd prize: 2000€, 3rd prize: 1000€.
Dedicated track:
The rewarding budget of 6000 € will be distributed as cash prizes between best contributions of the different tasks of the dedicated track. The organizers reserve the right to distribute this sum unequally between the tasks of the dedicated track.
Additionally, prizes may include Nokia products.
Organizing Committee of the MDC:
Workshop Chairs:
Juha Laurila, Nokia Research Center Lausanne
Daniel Gatica-Perez, Idiap Research Institute / EPFL
Dedicated Challenge Leaders:
Olivier Dousse, Nokia Research Center Lausanne
Trinh Minh Tri Do, Idiap Research Institute
Markus Miettinen, Nokia Research Center Lausanne
Open Challenge Leaders:
Imad Aad, Nokia Research Center Lausanne
Jan Blom, Nokia Research Center Lausanne
Administration:
Emma Doree, Nokia Research Center Lausanne
Julien Eberle, Nokia Research Center Lausanne
Olivier Bornet, IDIAP Research Institute
MDC Programme Committee:
The full list of PC members can be accessed here.
Detailed Participation Instructions and MDC Terms and Conditions:
Click on this link in order to receive more detailed instructions for the challenge, as well as the MDC Terms and Conditions document needed during the registration process.
