NIST Research Framework

Which Solution Would Make a Stronger Proposal?

• Option A) The Research Framework as part of the TopCoder platform

• Option B) A separate Research Framework which complements the TopCoder platform

What is The Research Framework?

• The focus is providing multimodal streaming data which are synchronized
  • 25 video streams + 5 to 10 other streams
• Provides robust API for storing and retrieving streaming data
• Two separate instances used for external vs internally accessible scenarios for security
• Sign up, ranking, management of contest, etc should definitely not be in this framework 

Option A

• TopCoder will develop it and it will be considered as part of their platform.
• If you use TopCoder, you get their coupled research framework functionality as well.

Option B

• A separate Research Framework which complements the TopCoder platform
• The framework will be open source allowing a community of researchers to use it during and beyond the Challenge without requiring TopCoder's platform  

Where would the Research Framework live?

• Open Source project on Github under new "Org"
• Contributors will include any organization or individual interested in contributing to the research framework
• Will include Prominent Edge, TopCoder, Kitware, Corner Alliance, and any other interested parties

Advantage of Open Source 

• Allows the use of the framework for research to solve public safety’s hard problems and not only for challenges
• Interested parties can stand up the framework internally as well without licensing fees or legal concerns both of which can be prohibitive for individuals and organizations.

... Advantage of Open Source 

• Allows any organization to make changes to the framework to support their research as opposed to having to allocate funds and/or ask a product company to make changes for them to their platform. Note that even when funding is available, a product company will have to deem the change fitting for them to make the change and have the bandwidth and interest to make the change.

... Advantage of Open Source 

• These are just some of the reasons why government agencies prefer opensource solutions when possible

Example of multi-modal streaming data framework