This book provides an account of the use of computational tactical metrics in improving sports analysis, in particular the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) data in soccer. As well as offering a practical perspective on collective behavioural analysis, it introduces the computational metrics available in the literature that allow readers to identify collective behaviour and patterns of play in team sports. These metrics only require the bio-dimensional geo-referencing information from GPS or video-tracking systems to provide qualitative and quantitative information about the tactical behaviour of players and the inter-relationships between teammates and their opponents. Exercises, experimental cases and algorithms enable readers to fully comprehend how to compute these metrics, as well as introducing them to the ultimate performance analysis tool, which is the basis to run them on. The script to compute the metrics is presented in Python. The book is a valuable resource for professional analysts as well students and researchers in the field of sports analysis wanting to optimise the use of GPS trackers in soccer.

To understand the dynamic patterns of behaviours and interactions between athletes that characterize successful performance in different sports is an important challenge for all sport practitioners. This book guides the reader in understanding how an ecological dynamics framework for use of artificial intelligence (AI) can be implemented to interpret sport performance and the design of practice contexts. By examining how AI methodologies are utilized in team games, such as football, as well as in individual sports, such as golf and climbing, this book provides a better understanding of the kinematic and physiological indicators that might better capture athletic performance by looking at the current state-of-the-art AI approaches. Artificial Intelligence in Sport Performance Analysis provides an all-encompassing perspective in an innovative approach that signals practical applications for both academics and practitioners in the fields of coaching, sports analysis, and sport science, as well as related subjects such as engineering, computer and data science, and statistics.

Explaining how graph theory and social network analysis can be applied to team sports analysis, This book presents useful approaches, models and methods that can be used to characterise the overall properties of team networks and identify the prominence of each team player. Exploring the different possible network metrics that can be utilised in sports analysis, their possible applications and variances from situation to situation, the respective chapters present an array of illustrative case studies. Identifying the general concepts of social network analysis and network centrality metrics, readers are shown how to generate a methodological protocol for data collection. As such, the book provides a valuable resource for students of the sport sciences, sports engineering, applied computation and the social sciences.

This book introduces the ultimate performance analysis tool (uPATO) as a new software to compute social network metrics in the scope of team sports analysis. The reader will identify the algorithms to test the general properties of the team, the co-dependencies and the centrality levels of players, i.e. to evaluate the individual, sub-group, and team performance analysis. As uPATO tool implements the metrics for all options, namely for unweighted graphs, weighted graphs, unweighted digraphs and weighted digraphs, it is also useful for network analysis into other areas beyond team sports. The book assists the reader to compute the metrics and to use it in different scenarios.

The six-volume set LNCS 8579-8584 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2014, held in Guimarães, Portugal, in June/July 2014. The 347 revised papers presented in 30 workshops and a special track were carefully reviewed and selected from 1167 initial submissions. The 289 papers presented in the workshops cover various areas in computational science ranging from computational science technologies to specific areas of computational science such as computational geometry and security.

This book addresses important topics of coaching in order to better understand what sports coaching is and the challenges that arise when assuming this activity. It provides the reader with useful insights to the field of sports coaching, and discusses topics such as coaching education, areas of intervention, and main challenges. With contributions by experts and well-known authors in the field, this volume presents an up-to-date picture of the scholarship in the coaching field. It introduces key aspects on the future of the science of coaching and provides coach educators, researchers, faculty, and students with new perspectives on topics within the field to help improve their coaching effectiveness.

This book offers a systematic overview of the concepts and practical techniques that readers need to get the most out of their large-scale data mining projects and research studies. It guides them through the data-analytical thinking essential to extract useful information and obtain commercial value from the data. Presenting the outcomes of International Conference on Soft Computing and Data Mining (SCDM-2017), held in Johor, Malaysia on February 6–8, 2018, it provides a well-balanced integration of soft computing and data mining techniques. The two constituents are brought together in various combinations of applications and practices. To thrive in these data-driven ecosystems, researchers, engineers, data analysts, practitioners, and managers must understand the design choice and options of soft computing and data mining techniques, and as such this book is a valuable resource, helping readers solve complex benchmark problems and better appreciate the concepts, tools, and techniques employed.