CS or CE | 1-3 students | Research+Development project | Laboratory of Meteorological Computing project in collaboration with Hong Kong Observatory under the Cooperative Training Agreement
Interested students please send me a CV on application
To develop software system to automatically generate a higher temporal resolution (6-hour time window or less) weather forecast based on output of a numerical weather prediction (NWP) model. In particular, the system should have the following capabilities:
Separate topics for multi-student group include, but not limited to:
| English | Chinese | |
| The Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) | http://www.weather.gov.hk/ | |
| HKO Local weather forecast | .../wxinfo/currwx/flw.htm | .../wxinfo/currwx/flwc.htm |
| HKO NWP information page | .../nwp/mesomodel_e.htm | .../nwp/mesomodel_c.htm |
| HKO NWP charts page | .../nwp/nwpe.htm | .../nwp/nwpc.htm |
| A guide to the code form FM92-IX Ext. GRIB, Edition 1 | http://www.wmo.int/web/www/WMOCodes/Guides/GRIB/GRIB1-Contents.html | |
| Information about FM92 GRIB Edition 2 | http://www.wmo.ch/web/www/DPS/grib-2.html | |
| JGrib library | http://jgrib.sourceforge.net/ | |
CS | 1-3 students | Mostly development project | Laboratory of Meteorological Computing project in collaboration with Hong Kong Observatory under the Cooperative Training Agreement
Interested students please send me a CV on application
Students in this project are required to develop a graphical system for displaying forecast weather maps based on numerical weather prediction (NWP) model for TV presentation. In particular, the system should have the following capabilities:
Separate topics for multi-student group:
| English | Chinese | |
| The Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) | http://www.weather.gov.hk/ | |
| HKO TV presentation | Not available | .../video/video.shtml |
| HKO Weather Family Cartoons | Not available | .../video/cartoon.htm |
| HKO Weather Maps | .../wxinfo/currwx/wxcht.htm | .../wxinfo/currwx/wxchtc.htm |
| HKO Local weather forecast | .../wxinfo/currwx/flw.htm | .../wxinfo/currwx/flwc.htm |
| HKO NWP information page | .../nwp/mesomodel_e.htm | .../nwp/mesomodel_c.htm |
| HKO NWP charts page | .../nwp/nwpe.htm | .../nwp/nwpc.htm |
| A guide to the code form FM92-IX Ext. GRIB, Edition 1 | http://www.wmo.int/web/www/WMOCodes/Guides/GRIB/GRIB1-Contents.html | |
| Information about FM92 GRIB Edition 2 | http://www.wmo.ch/web/www/DPS/grib-2.html | |
| JGrib library | http://jgrib.sourceforge.net/ | |
CS or CE | 1-3 students | Research project | Laboratory of Meteorological Computing project in collaboration with Hong Kong Observatory under the Cooperative Training Agreement
Interested students please send me a CV on application
Students are advised to take CSIS0315 "Multimedia Computing and Applications" and CSIS0318 "Advanced Multimedia"
On viewing an animation of satellite images such as those provided by the Hong Kong Observatory (English, Chinese), we can track the evolution and flow of the clouds. Similarly, when we view an animation of radar reflectivity images of a tropical cyclone, for example, this one (English, Chinese), both its structure in different scales can be discerned. Since motion and evolution information are important in weather forecasting, objects such as clouds or radar echos are tracked using motion estimation methods. A major class of motion estimation methods builds the field of motion vector by dividing the image into small blocks, and for each block, the most similar block in the previous frame is found. This class of method assumes that each block will not change much with time. This assumption is obviously violated for nonrigid bodies such as clouds and rain patches.
Another problem in interpreting radar images is the problem of aliasing. In one type of radar, Doppler radar, what is measured is the speed of approach of rain patches towards the radar. However, each Doppler radar has a limited range for radial speed measure. For example, if the radar can measure speed of at most 10ms-1, rain patches approaching at 11ms-1 would appear to be approaching the radar at -9ms-1. This is called aliasing. The removal of such effect, or dealiasing, is useful in severe weather conditions such as when there is typhoon and tornado. A Doppler radar image can be seen in the Tornado example of the Hong Kong Observatory: (English, Chinese).
Topics in this research project includes:
The use of the fundamental algorithms designed in the project include:
| English | Chinese | |
| The Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) | http://www.weather.gov.hk/ | |
| HKO Radar image animation | .../wxinfo/radars/index_ani.html | .../wxinfo/radars/index_ani_c.html |
| 3-Dimensional Weather Radar Images | .../wxinfo/radars/index.shtml | .../wxinfo/radars/indexc.shtml |
CE | 1-2 students | Research project | Laboratory of Meteorological Computing project in collaboration with Hong Kong Observatory under the Cooperative Training Agreement
Interested students please send me a CV on application
Students are advised to take CSIS0315 "Multimedia Computing and Applications" and CSIS0318 "Advanced Multimedia"
Radar reflectivity data, which shows the amount of rain, snow or hail aloft, can be seen as three-dimensional volume data. To track a patch of rainstorm, one can use a 3D version of active contour model to do so. The idea is to enclose a patch of rainstorm with an imaginary surface which shrinks until it wraps the storm. Students taking the project are to develop a system that reads the radar sweep data, finds the rain patches, shrink wrap them, and visualize them. Merging and splitting of the rainstorm patches also have to be handled. Data related to the shrink-wrapped rain patches, for example location, orientation, movement direction, the total amount of water species in the patch, are to be reported.
| English | Chinese | |
| The Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) | http://www.weather.gov.hk/ | |
| HKO Radar image animation | .../wxinfo/radars/index_ani.html | .../wxinfo/radars/index_ani_c.html |
| 3-Dimensional Weather Radar Images | .../wxinfo/radars/index.shtml | .../wxinfo/radars/indexc.shtml |
CS, CE, or CogSc | 1-3 students | Development project | In collaboration with Department of Music
The Indonesian gamelan is a set of gong-chime type of percussion instruments. The department of music has devised a way to transcribe Balinese gamelan music into a "box" (table-like) notation to help non-musicians to learn the music. Currently, the transcriptions are typeset using LaTeX+MusiXTeX typesetting system. Yet, it is expected that sheet music using Western music notation, and possibly other forms, are needed in the future. A system that can run on Windows and Macintosh platforms is needed to enter, store, and typeset those music.
To the technically-minded students: you don't need to be proficient in music to do the project. You'll learn a bit of music theory and things about gamelan, compiler techniques and the languages LaTeX and MusiXTeX which produce beautifully typeset documents in the project.
Whether you take the project or not, you can try playing the instruments in the Community Gamelan which generally have practice sessions on Monday nights at MB123. Please contact me for information.
How does Balinese gamelan look like? Here are some of the instruments:
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| CengCeng | Jegog | Kantil | Kendang | Kempur | Suling |
Here it is a photo of a performance shows how they look like when they're put together (courtesy Dorothy Cheung, 2002). You can see the smart boys and beautiful girls after a performance on 2005-11-20[0] at Hong Kong Cultural Center.
Just to give you an idea of the input and output being used currently, here it is the sheet music (PDF format) for the box notation of one of the pieces, along with the corresponding Western music notation. The LaTeX+MusiXTeX source for the box notation and that for the Western music notation are here. (Don't bother to compile it though, a number of other support files are needed.)
Related websites:
CogSc | 1-2 students | Research+Development project
Recent advances of multimedia are mainly caused by the better understanding the human sensory and perception systems. Understanding of our hearing system lead to the development of perceptual audio coding techniques used in MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis and ATRAC. Studies of our vocal system bring about technologies such as vocoding, speech compression and speech recognition. Knowledge on visual perception made possible methods to compress image and video used in JPEG and MPEG.
Of all the modalities (visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile), some have not been used in multimedia because of technical or psychological hurdles. Why are they so? Can the advancement of technology help?
Students taking the project are to:
Some programming is expected especially on implementation and experimentation.
| The BBC site on human body and mind | http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/ |
| Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, on usability. Articles like the one on 2006-04-17 are interesting. | http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ |
| JPEG and JBIG official site | http://www.jpeg.org/ |
| Official MPEG homepage | http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/ |
| MPEG pointers and resources | http://www.mpeg.org/MPEG/index.html |
| H.264 page from Apple. Look for the Technology brief and FAQ. | http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/h264/ |
| Xiph.Org Foundation | http://www.xiph.org/ |
| vorbis.com | http://www.vorbis.com/ |
| Sony's site about ATRAC. Look for the Technology pages. | http://www.sony.net/Products/ATRAC3/ |
| minidisc.org . MDs use ATRAC, look at the Technology part. | http://www.minidisc.org/ |
