Monday 3 September 2012

#EnviLOD: Project Risks and Budget



Like any project involving software development, as well as research, #EnviLOD is facing a number of risks, detailed below:


Risk Description
Probability (P)
1 – 5

Severity (S)
1 – 5

Risk Score
(PxS)
Detail of action to be taken
(mitigation / reduction / transfer / acceptance)
Staff recruitment and  retention
1
3
3
EnviLOD draws on experienced post-doctoral staff, who are already in place at the three partner organisations. 
Delays in tool  development and software integration
1
4
4
The chosen LOD-based semantic enrichment and search tools have been integrated already in GATE. The project team has track record in LOD-based semantic annotation, thesauri, and their use for semantic search.
Stakeholder identification and outreach
1
3
3
British Library and HR Wallingford have already strong user engagement. Additional stakeholder identification and engagement activities will be carried out as part of WP2.
Stakeholders with conflicting requirements
2
4
8
The requirements stage (now completed) would have identified early in the project, if there are any conflicts. 
Requirements gathering over-runs and delays technical development
2
2
4
The project plan is structured so that initial requirements are provided by the British Library and HR Wallingford. This will enable technical development to begin in WP3, while further user engagement and requirements refinement are carried out in parallel in WP2.
Mismatch against user needs
1
5
5
Tight correspondence between user requirements and the developed Linked Data solutions will be ensured through our agile methodology, which includes continuous development-user evaluation loops.
Fail to meet milestones
2
3
6
A project plan with clear objectives, detailed tasks and timings has been produced. We monitor progress fortnightly.
Unforeseen technical issues
1
3
3
Both the LOD-based semantic enrichment and semantic search tools will be based on pre-existing open-source prototypes, which will be developed and customised here.
Stakeholders fail to understand LOD and  semantic search
3
3
9
EnviLOD has a user-driven strategy, informed by the stakeholders from the outset. The semantic search user interface(s) will be designed in consultation with users.
Accuracy of the automatic semantic enrichment services is not sufficient
2
4
8
The continuous evaluation with the British Library and other users will help us monitor accuracy continuously and identify problems as soon as they arise. 
Scalability and real-time text analysis cannot be achieved
3
4
12
Sheffield have experience in large-scale semantic annotation and scalability is a key project focus. Moreover, it is one of the main goals to develop methods for selecting appropriate subsets of LOD resources, this enabling efficient analysis while maintaining sufficiently high quality of results.

EnviLOD Budget

EnviLOD's total budget is £69,771, with £55,816 being funded by JISC.  The budget breaks down as follows: