DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8004751
title: The NicIcon Database of Handwritten Icons for Crisis Management

description: <strong>The NicIcon Database of Handwritten Icons for Crisis Management</strong> The NicIcon collection comprises simultaneously acquired online pen trajectories and offline scans of 14 classes of icons that are important in the domain of crisis management and incident response systems. The icons were designed such that (i) they have a visual resemblance to the objects they represent or correspond to well known corresponding symbols (so that they are easy to learn by the users), and (ii) are distinguishable by the computer. Furthermore, each participant was requested to write the so-called "London Letter", a well-known piece of text which is used to collect handwriting for forensic document examination purposes. The NicIcon database contains 24,441 hand drawn icons that are available both offline (as scans of pen-on-paper drawn icons) and online (recorded as time series coordinates on a digitizing tablet). In total, 32 participants, all volunteers, participated inthe experiment. They were all Dutch students in the age range of 19 to 30 (μ = 21.63, σ = 2.35), of which 29 were male, and 3 were female. A detailed description of the data and the collection can be found in the publication "The NicIcon Database of Handwritten Icons for Crisis Management" by Ralph Niels, Don Willems and Louis Vuurpijl. This paper can for example be found at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228664054_The_NicIcon_Database_of_Handwritten_Icons_for_Crisis_Management/citations .DATA_INFO The NicIcon collection contains data acquired from 33<br> students. The collection contains so-called "iconic<br> gestures", representing symbolic drawings of situations and<br> events to be marked on so-called "interactive maps".<br> Gesture classes are inspired by symbolic representations of,<br> e.g., cars, persons, police, floods, accidents, etcetera.<br> In total 14 classes of gestures were collected.<br> Furthermore, each participant was requested to write the so-<br> called "London Letter", a well-known piece of text which is<br> used to collect handwriting for forensic document examination<br> purposes. The data is segmented and labeled in pages and icons.<br> The texts remain unsegmented, but segmentation in<br> line/word/character is on our agenda. .SETUP A Wacom Intuos2 A4 oversize tablet was used as digital<br> input device. This tablet was set at a resolution of<br> 100 dpi, a reading height of 10 mm, and a maximum data<br> rate of 100 pps. The device distinguishes 1024 pressure<br> levels. The tablet was connected to a computer running<br> Microsoft Windows XP. Specially developed software was<br> used to record spatial coordinates and<br> pressure coordinates. An A4-sized sheet of 160 grams/$m^2$<br> paper was clamped to the tablet. A Wacom writing pen,<br> with a green Lamy M21 pen tip<br> (see www.lamy.com/eng/b2c/Refills and inks/M 21), was<br> used by the participants to draw the data. Each sheet of paper was scanned using a HP Scanjet 7400C<br> flatbed scanner at 300dpi resolution in 24bits color. Both<br> online and offline data are available for download from<br> http://unipen.nici.ru.nl/NicIcon Each paper sheet contained seven rows of five columns,<br> resulting in 35 drawing areas. For each row, 5 instances of<br> the same class were drawn at a certain size. Each of the 33<br> participants had to fill in 22 of such paper sheets,<br> resulting in 770 icon gestures per participant. .LEXICON_INFO The 14 gesture classes are:<br> Accident - a triangle with exclamation mark inside<br> Bomb - a circle with fuse<br> Car - side-view of a car<br> Casualty - a circle with an 'X' cross below it<br> Electricity - a "lightning" arrow with head downwards<br> Flood - two horizontal curly lines<br> FireBrigade - a triangle with character 'F' inside<br> Fire - a gestures with flames<br> Gas - three vertical curly lines<br> Injury - a person laying horizontal<br> Paramedics - a square with a '+' cross inside<br> Person - a vertical (standing) human figure<br> Police - a diamond with a 'P' inside<br> RoadBlock - a circle with a '-' sign inside Each label associated with an icon contains 6 fields:<br> &lt;www&gt;-&lt;pp&gt;-&lt;r&gt;-&lt;c&gt;-&lt;l&gt;-&lt;size&gt; , where:<br> www = writer identification (000-034)<br> pp = page number (00-23)<br> r = row (0-6)<br> c = column (0-4)<br> l = classlabel<br> s = size<br> For example, the icon labeled as "000-19-5-4-flood-M"<br> was written by writer "000" on page "19", at row=5 and col=4,<br> the label is "flood" and the size is "medium". Note that the<br> first two sheets were used for practising and contain icons<br> labeled with size='A' (any). The other size categories are<br> 'S' (small), 'M' (medium), and 'L' (large). The text from the London letter reads: Our Londen business is good, but Vienna an Berlin are<br> quiet. Mr. D. Lloyd has gone to Switzerland and I hope<br> for good news. He will be there for a week at 1496<br> Zermatt Street and then goes to Turin and Rome and<br> will join Colonel Parry and arrive at Athens, Greece,<br> November 27th or December 2nd. Letters there should be<br> addressed King James Blvd. 3580. We expect Charles E.<br> Fuller Tuesday. Dr. L. Mc Quaid and Robert Unger,<br> Esq., left on the 'Y. X.' Express tonight. .PAD Wacom Intuos2 A4 oversize .COMMENT Below, the settings used during data collection. So, resolution was at<br> 100 dpi and sampling rate at 100Hz. Pressure is given in tablet units.<br> Both X and Y coordinates are given in micrometer (transformed from the<br> original tablet coordinates). .COMMENT xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<br> TABLET TEMPORAL RESOLUTION<br> .POINTS_PER_SECOND 100 .COMMENT xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<br> TABLET SPATIAL RESOLUTION = 100dpi, but coordinates are in micro-meter<br> .X_POINTS_PER_MM 1000<br> .Y_POINTS_PER_MM 1000 .COMMENT xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<br> actually, pressure is not in gram but in tablet units<br> TABLET PRESSURE RESOLUTION = 1024<br> .POINTS_PER_GRAM 1024
description: {"references": ["Niels, R., Willems, D., Vuurpijl, L.: The NicIcon database of handwritten icons. In: 11th International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (ICFHR 2008), Montreal, Canada, August 19-21 (2008)"]}