Nectec project will create a national digital archive
Written by Writer on Friday, October 3rd, 2008
Nectec project will create a national digital archive
Sasiwimon Boonruang
A digital format of `rue-see-dad-ton’ (Thai-style body-twisting) exercise developed by the Nectec team combines 3D techniques, motion caption and video rendering, making the body movement more natural.
How wonderful it would be if we could search for any information contained in a stack of paper-based documents or in any physical form - and from anywhere in the nation and just with a mouse click?
Accessing information about Thai culture, history, art, tourism and academic research will no longer be a challenging task after the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) has completed “Digitised Thailand,” a project that marks the collaboration of several organisations.
The initiative aims to develop Thailand’s national digital archives by collecting and transforming all physical data scattered around the nation into digital form and allowing people at all levels to gain access to an enormous wealth of knowledge at any time and from anywhere over the Internet.
According to Nectec director Dr Pansak Siriruchatapong, in the near future we would enter the content industry era. Digitised Thailand has been initiated to create the potential to handle the rapid growth of content and information.
Nectec director Dr Pansak Siriruchatapong.
“The content goes beyond what have seen in video or audio content and Nectec will not cover the entertainment area, but will focus on knowledge-based content,” he said, adding that Nectec has created tools and technologies for content creation, archiving, analysis and access.
Digitised Thailand is Nectec’s flagship project to show off the integration of a variety of technology developments which Nectec has been working on for over a decade and which would be used to build up the country’s largest digital archive for practical use.
It is hoped that the project will help to improve the literacy of Thais and, importantly, push the country towards being a new, knowledge-based society.
The three-year project, which will be run from now until 2010, will start by collecting Thai-based data available on the Internet and will put it into the archive. Meanwhile, the development includes encouraging local libraries and institutions across the nation to convert useful physical data into digital formats for further development.
Nectec deputy director Dr Virach Sornlertlamvanich, the project leader, noted that Digitised Thailand focused on five major perspectives of Thailand spanning knowledge, language, culture, history and tribes.
There are over 80 dialects of Thai and Nectec has developed an encyclopaedia and dictionaries such as Thai-Japanese, Thai-Lanna and Thai-Malayoo so far.
Nectec has developed a Digitised Thailand framework to set guidelines for the country and for every part of society around data collection and digitisation.
The framework also includes standards development around interoperability, data management, information search and information security to allow all data to be digitised, stored, shared and accessed using the same format while facilitating information exchange across the network.
Nectec deputy director Dr Virach Sornlertlamvanich, Digitised Thailand project leader.
Apart from digitisation technology to develop 3D digital content in the form of a virtual museum, natural language processing technologies including a web crawler, which is used to collect data and be a smart search engine for information search, are key elements to help deliver information scattered in many places to users as required. Meanwhile, knowledge-engineering technology also plays an important role in building and maintaining knowledge-based systems.
Large database management systems and data mining technology are also significant pieces in managing the overall database while technologies including networking, security and the development of an application program interface (API) are being used to help facilitate access, search and to deliver information to users through various devices.
Nectec has conducted pilot projects to develop digital content, starting by collecting data and knowledge related to Thai herbs under a project called “Knowledge Unifying Initiator for Herbal Information” (KUIHerb) through collaboration with Faculty of Pharmacy of Silpakorn University and Songkhla Nakarin University, he said .
“There are many herbal information web sites, but they are scattered and we have aggregated them by designing a Web 2.0 open interface for pharmacists to share and post information on the network,” Dr Virach said.
KUIHerb is a herbal information resource that includes information about local medicines, photos, videos, medicine recipes and prescriptions and information about poisonous substances.
Nectec is also working with Rajamangala University of Technology Lanna to collect and digitise cultural information and wisdoms of the former Lanna Kingdom to develop an archive under the Digitised Lanna project.
The information includes documents about Lanna and Thai dances where Nectec has applied motion capture technology to create digital versions of Thai dances. This will serve local people as a community library and will also allow access to students as an e-learning resource in the near future.
Once all information was in digital form, it could be used in many ways and be offered as a public service for e-learning purposes, Dr Virach said, noting that it would be continuously expanded to include other types of content using the same model.
“We hope that once Thai-based data is converted and put into the digital archive, the country will have an enormous database that can be developed into sustainable knowledge and this will be invaluable information source, which will not only stimulate Thais to improve their self-learning but preserve Thai culture and offer new opportunities for business development.
