ROBUST

ROBUST created models and methods for describing, understanding and managing the users, groups, behaviours and needs of online communities. A highly scalable cloud and stream-based data management infrastructure architecture was developed to handle the real time analysis of large volumes of community data. Simulation and visualisation services were developed to support detailed understanding, prediction and exploration of possible actions.

IT Innovation was responsible for developing risk models and a framework for pro-actively managing risks in online communities. We developed a prototype web application, Community Analysis Tool (CAT), demonstrating how community owners can manage their communities with respect to risk. We identified and addressed common risks such as community becoming inactive, users leaving the community and poor content quality. However, there's a flip-side to risk, where there are opportunities, such as gaining experts.

Key to the CAT is that it is not merely an analytics framework for analysing the state of a community at the present; but offering an insight onto the future state of the community. In addition to the CAT framework itself, IT Innovation developed simulation models for allowing users to simulate what-if scenarios for their communities, e.g., for taking a certain action to address a risk. These models were also used as predictors, to give indication of risks such as community becoming inactive in the future.