Researchers often deploy sensor arrays and networks to gather information. Sifting through the massive amounts of heterogeneous data from a variety of sensors and sources — those that are reliable as well as those that are unvetted — to obtain accurate information can be a monumental task. It is the quantification and assessment on the Quality-of-Information (QoI) provided by sensors that Dong Wang, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, is studying. This work is funded by a recently received grant from the Army Research Office for his proposal titled “Quality-of-Information-Aware Data Collection and Analysis for Active and Collaborative Sensing.”
The goal of the project is to develop a model — the Quality-of-Information-Aware Data Collection and Analysis Model (QDCAM) — to determine the QoI in collaborative sensing applications. Leveraging techniques from estimation theory, data analytics, and mobile sensing application development, Wang and his team will address three main areas: how to estimate the reliability of sensors and correctness of their measurements in collaborative sensing, how to accurately access the quality of the results, and how to validate the QoI and QDCAM. “I believe this work can lead to the next generation of information distillation services,“ says Wang, “where predictable, reliable, and timely answers can be obtained from the huge amount of real-time sensing data, empowering researchers to better understand the data and make sound decisions.”
Wang’s research interests focus on big data analytics; reliable information distillation systems; cyber-physical systems with humans-in-the-loop; social sensing and crowdsourcing applications; smart cities and the Internet of things.
He authored the book “Social Sensing, Building Reliable Systems on Unreliable Data” [Elsevier 2015] and has written several book chapters and refereed papers.
Wang is also a member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Network Science and Applications at Notre Dame. Prior to joining the University in 2014, he served as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Originally published by Nina Welding at conductorshare.nd.edu on July 22, 2016.