Computer Science in Sport

Research and Practice

Arnold Baca

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781134711222
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Computer Science

Computers are a fundamentally important tool in sport science research, sports performance analysis and, increasingly, in coaching and education programmes in sport. This book defines the field of 'sport informatics', explaining how computer science can be used to solve sport-related problems, in both research and applied aspects.

Beginning with a clear explanation of the functional principles of hardware and software, the book examines the key functional areas in which computer science is employed in sport, including:

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• knowledge discovery and database development

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• data acquisition, including devices for measuring performance data

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• motion tracking and analysis systems

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• modelling and simulation

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• match analysis systems

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• e-learning and multimedia in sports education

Bridging the gap between theory and practice, this book is important reading for any student, researcher or practitioner working in sport science, sport performance analysis, research methods in sport, applied computer science or informatics.

1 An introduction to sport informatics

Daniel Link and Martin Lames

Introduction

Over the past three decades, the discipline ‘sport informatics’ – also called ‘computer science in sport’ – has become a growing discipline. In this chapter the historical roots are reconstructed and some reflections on the nature of this new discipline between sport science and informatics are given.

The term ‘sport informatics’ originates from a congress in Graz (Austria), organized by the International Organisation for Sports Information (IOSI) in 1975. The related proceedings were published by Recla and Timmer (1976) with the German title ‘Kreative Sportinformatik’ (‘Creative Sport Informatics’).

Sport informatics covers all activities that include aspects of computer science and sport science, ranging from simple tools for handling data and controlling sensors up to the modelling and simulation of complex sport-related phenomena. Whereas first applications in the seventies used computers for information and documentation purposes only, current approaches deal, for example, with virtual reality in sport, computer technology for supporting top level sports, e-learning in sports training, the modelling and simulation of biomechanical phenomena, and many more.

Today, computer science in sport is a well-established research and development field. The International Association of Computer Science in Sport (IACSS) was founded in 2002 and promotes research in this area. In many countries such as Austria, Croatia, Germany, Turkey, Great Britain, China, Slovakia and India national workgroups have been established, which represent sport informatics in the national scientific community and contribute new technological innovations to sport. IACSS also maintains good relations with various other sport scientific organizations like the International Association for Sports Information (IASI), the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education (ICSSPE) or the International Sports Engineering Association (ISEA).

The first chapter of this book reflects the development of the discipline, analyses its current situation and defines the subject area. The roots of the discipline of sport informatics lie in Germany in the early seventies and the first section in this chapter will throw a brief glance on the early developments. It aims to give readers an impression of the prevailing ideas leading to IACSS. The second section discusses the interdisciplinary relation between computer science and sport science and identifies different types of cooperation. Based on this discussion the third section defines the subject area of sport informatics by providing a definition and a structural model of the discipline.

Historical roots

It is rewarding to start a historical view on sport informatics with a glance at the historical development of the two master disciplines involved. Computer science and sport science are dealt with in the first two subsections of this chapter with regard to their historical conceptual structure. The third subsection gives a short overview about the institutional development of sport informatics in Germany.

Computer science

In the sixties and the seventies of the last century, in Germany the term ‘Informatik’ was mainly associated with questions of technology. A popular German encyclopaedia described ‘Informatik’ as ‘the science of the systematic processing of information, in particular the automatic processing using digital computers’ (Engesser, 1988). In terms of this definition, the discipline includes mathematical activities, which deal with algorithmic processes for the description and transformation of information and also engineering activities, concerning aspects of the development and application of computers. This technological perspective is comparable to the common understanding of the discipline ‘computer science’ in the United States or Great Britain (National Research Council, 2004).

In the beginning of the eighties, the importance of computer systems increased in almost every part of modern societies. It became more and more clear that the use of computer systems leads to interactions between system processes and the processes in the real world. To study these interactions, many computer scientists adopted approaches and methods from the social and behavioural sciences. These research fields were accepted as a part of the discipline ‘Informatik’. Today, many countries use the English term ‘informatics’ – derived from the German ‘Informatik’ – for the science of information. Nygaard (1986), for example, defines ‘informatics’ as the ‘science that has as its domain information processes and related phenomena in artefacts, society and nature’. This perspective separates the mathematical/logical part from the technical one and refers to the concepts of cybernetics and systems theory.

Informatics emerges by separation from mathematics and engineering science – later approaches from human sciences were integrated. The discipline is divided into the sub-disciplines of theoretical, technical and practical informatics, which together are called ‘core’ informatics (Claus, 1975). The applications and questions related to the use of computers are studied by applied informatics.

Since computer science is very much appreciated for its support to other sciences, in some cases the combination of technical expertise from computer science and specific domain knowledge led to autonomous research fields like bio-informatics, neuro-informatics and business informatics. Sport informatics could also be seen in this tradition.

Figure 1.1 Commonly used structural model of informatics

In the past there was a debate about whether these research fields should be accepted as integral part of computer science. Some authors, for example, claim a strict distinction between cooperation fields and the core area of ‘Informatik’ (Luft, 1992). Today, the discipline in Germany (also known as ‘Informatique’ in France) is a kind of mixture between computer sciences and Nygaard’s concept of informatics (see Figure 1.1), but nevertheless the question about its limitations is still subject to discussion.

Sport science

Sport science took, at least in Germany, a development that was in many aspects comparable to the development of Informatik. A common definition describes sport science as the set of knowledge, theories and research methods that deal with problems and phenomena related to sport (Röthig and Prohl, 2003). While this definition is evident, a widely accepted definition of the term sport is still an open problem.

Another important issue in the discussion about the nature of sport science is the relationship between the disciplines of sport science. In the late sixties, Germany saw the introduction of sport science to universities. Before, it was taught academically mostly in teacher education institutions. For this – more or less – pragmatic reason the argument was put forward that the complexity of sport could not be investigated by existing research fields. So, the necessity of one unified discipline, with a high degree of interdisciplinarity between its sub-disciplines, was a central argument for the foundation of sport science.

To support this position, Ries and Kriesi (1974) proposed a model showing three phases of the development of sport science: (1) separation from basic disciplines, (2) aggregation of sub-disciplines within a multidisciplinary science and (3) integration of sub-disciplines into a consistent and integrative science (Figure 1.2).

Scientific reality showed that – in contrast to this idealized model – sport was mostly studied through the eyes of each sub-discipline (e.g. sport sociology, sport psychology, exercise science). Due to this fact, today sport science does not describe itself as a ‘unified science of sport’, but as a collection of overlapping research programmes in which interdisciplinarity exists only as temporary, problem centred research projects (Höner, 2001).

Figure 1.2 Idealized model of sport science development: separation of sport-related research fields from base sciences, aggregation into a multidisciplinary science and integration of sub-disciplines into a unified science (source: adapted from Ries and Kriesi, 1974)

Sport informatics

The idea of an interdisciplinary scientific discipline ‘sport informatics’ was promoted initially by Jürgen Perl, himself being a mathematician and a pioneering computer scientist in Germany. Together with Wolf Miethling he published the first monograph in the discipline (Miethling and Perl, 1981) that marked the beginning of sport informatics in the Federal Republic of Germany.

In 1985, Jürgen Perl founded the Institute for Informatics at Mainz University and established a working group in sport informatics. His idea to organize a first workshop on sport informatics in Hochheim (close to Mainz) in April 1989 gave rise to a series of workshops on this topic. The 1989 workshop was attended by many important German sport science groups and, unexpectedly, by some computer science groups in this field as well. This development starting in 1989 resulted in a series of biennial conferences.

This apparent success gave rise to a new strategic aim, which has been pursued since about 1994. The German Association of Sport Science (Deutsche Vereinigung für Sportwissenschaft, dvs) represents German academic sport science with (today) 900 members at sixty-seven universities. It is organized in subgroups (Sektionen) representing the disciplines of sport science and groups (Kommissionen) giving an organizational framework for special interdisciplinary topics. In September 1995, the general assembly of dvs established sport informatics as one of their official subgroups. This may be considered the formal birth date of the scientific discipline, because it meant the acknowledgement of sport informatics as discipline of sport science in Germany.

Figure 1.3 Scientific board of IACSS, inaugural meeting, Barcelona, 2003

Since then the biennial conferences of sport informatics in Germany have brought together the two traditions: the most recent workshop at Konstanz, Lake Constance, in 2012, was the 9th dvs Symposium of Sport Informatics as well as the 13th workshop on Informatics in Sport.

Soon after establishing a national association for sport informatics a new aim was targeted, i.e. to establish an international scientific association. Concerning globalization and the world becoming a truly global village through advances in information and communication technologies, it became clear that in different parts of this village, people were addressing the same problems.

In the area of game analysis one could, for example, mention the introduction of digital boards, efforts to enter data by natural language recognition software or the struggle for reliable computer-video couplings. These developments were brought forward independently, for example, at Mainz and Cardiff in the working groups of Jürgen Perl and Mike Hughes, respectively.

After three international meetings at Cologne (1997), Vienna (1999) and Cardiff (2001), the International Association of Computer Science in Sport (IACSS) was founded at Barcelona in 2003 and Jürgen Perl became the first president (Figure 1.3). Since then, a series of biennial international conferences has been organized (Hvar, 2005; Calgary, 2007; Canberra, 2009; Shanghai, 2011; and Istanbul, 2013) and members from different countries and almost all continents have joined the association.

The future prospects of the association are excellent. The unique combination of sport science and informatics with the large application field of sports at any level provides great perspectives. Nevertheless, the remarkable developments of the two sciences make it necessary to reflect episodically on the levels achieved in interdisciplinary cooperation between the fields and the concept of sport informatics.

Interdisciplinarity in sport informatics

First, this section outlines the mutual interests in cooperation of computer science and sport science in common projects. While the motive of sport science is quite obvious, that of computer science needs more elaborate discussion. The second part poses the questions: which quality of interdisciplinarity between sport science and computer science exists today and which quality would be desirable and realistic in future? This is done by discussing existing models of interdisciplinarity and proposing a classification for research activities in sport informatics.

Common fields of interests – why do computer science and sport science cooperate?

It is useful to differentiate between political, scientific and personal motivations for cooperation. From a political perspective one must bear in mind that interdisciplinarity is considered an important research paradigm in most countries. For example, the German Research Foundation (DFG), which is the central research funding organization in Germany, holds the view that scientific...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 An introduction to sport informatics
• 2 Computers, informatics and sport
• 3 Databases and expert systems
• 4 Data acquisition and processing
• 5 Motion tracking and analysis systems
• 6 Modelling and simulation
• 7 Game analysis
• 8 Information and communication technology-enhanced learning and training
• Index