Welcome to the website of my graduate course Efficient Provision of Cultural Services in Network Environment (2019) at the Department of Cultural Heritage Management and New Technologies of the University of Patras.

For any additional information do not hesitate to contact me by email at .

Thank you in advance for your interest and cooperation!

Evi Papaioannou

Course desciption and objectives

We are all familiar with the concept of a network: water supply networks, road networks, transportation networks, telecommunications networks, computer networks, social networks!

Networks are composed of nodes connected by links. The topology of the network indicates which pairs of nodes are connected by links i.e., it indicates nodes which are related. Networks, regardless of their scope, have common characteristics and common properties. Moreover, practical reasons, like for example network size, cost of necessary equipment, geographical limitations, etc., impose the use of models, i.e., virtual equivalents of actual networks, for studying networks characteristics and properties. These models are called graphs and consist of vertices corresponding to network nodes and edges corresponding to network links. In a graph, there exists an edge between two vertices as long as there is a link between the corresponding nodes in the actual network.

The use of a network is usually associated with the completion of a task through transmission (i.e., circulation) and sharing of data and information. Tasks performed over a network, like, for example, communication, transportation of people and goods, etc., are called services. In the special case when tasks performed over a network involve information and data related to culture, we refer to cultural services.

The quantitative evaluation of characteristics and properties of networks modelled as graphs usually involves counting of discrete entities, like, for example, vertices and edges, distances, etc. In addition, counting of discrete entities, like messages exchanged, required time steps, consumed energy units, etc., is also required to evaluate the network performance in terms of quantity and quality of supported services.

In the context of this graduate course we will address:

  • popular classes of graphs, including planar graphs and trees, which are often used for modelling and studying several tasks involving some sort of networking environment (e.g., communication, indexing, classification, traversal, exploration, search in places and collections, search, coding, maps, etc.)

  • basic methods for counting discrete objects

  • algorithms for efficient resource allocation (e.g., energy, bandwidth, etc.)

  • algorithms for search, data communication and storage as well as for secure transmission of information and data over inherently insecure network structures like the Internet

Overall, our approach is based on abstraction: our objective focuses on the study and understanding of the underlying fundamental ideas and the theoretical framework which provide the principles for the design and implementation of various applications and services (existing and forthcoming) of cultural interest in network environments.