Loughborough University
Leicestershire, UK
LE11 3TU
+44 (0)1509 263171

Advanced VR Research Centre

British Swimming - Performance Evaluation Platform

Background

British Swimming operated five Intensive Training Centres (ITCs) around the UK to provide a world-class daily training environment for its athletes and coaches to succeed in international competitions. The AVRRC was funded by British Swimming to establish a web-platform to manage the existing ITC framework of British Swimming including functionality to capture data and text based information and produce management reports.

Objectives

  • Defining the requirements of the platform in terms of user interface, data capture, reports and graphs through consultation with British Swimming and using its Annual Programmes as the basic reference.
  • Design & implement using commercial and open source software where appropriate.
  • Verify the web platform against British Swimming requirements.
  • Investigating training measures and defining Athletic Attributes including associated metrics. This was carried out through consultation with subject matter experts within British Swimming in particular with technical staff including coaches and Sports Science & Sport Medicine (SSSM) staff.
  • Investigate aggregation methods for AAs through a performance analysis environment using offline COTS and interactive visualisation methods. The aim was to measure and improve training decisions by acquiring insight into the relationship and interactions between training and race performance attributes and metrics.

The initial study sought to establish through modelling the sensitivity of the parameters and the probability of unexpectedly long delays and extra cost in the system integration phase.

Research Activities

Due to the commercial confidentiality and National sensitivity of this project it is not possible to provide full details of the work undertaken. However, the research was successful with a fully functional web-based assesment platform being delivered to British Swimming. In addition, user interaction with the athlete's performance data was greatly improved through the application of use of the AVRRC's Visual Analytics research.

People

PI Professor Roy S. Kalawsky

Dr Jogn O'Brien

Dr Petri Vitello