Data-driven insight
Predictive Sports Analytics is an academic community providing data-driven research in the field of sports science. By fusing cutting-edge analytics with the ‘big data’ that underpins all modern sport, we work directly with clubs and societies to provide unique statistical insight into the building blocks of performance, providing coaches and athletes alike with the novel sporting acumen that helps facilitate on-field success.
Who We Are
Predictive Sports Analytics (PSA) is one of the founding research groups within the AI Collaboration Centre (AICC) at Queen’s University Belfast. PSA brings together researchers and expertise from mathematics, statistics, physics, and computer science, in collaboration with sports science practitioners across soccer, rugby, cycling, athletics, and Gaelic games, in order to:
- Advance research in the predictive modelling of sports and health metrics.
- Implement PSA developments into real-world applications.
- Translate research into technological and software development.
- Find custom solutions to problems identified by coaches and athletes around the world.
At the cutting edge of AI and sport science, PSA is developing a reputation of high impact research in collaboration with sporting bodies at the highest level.
Supporting Athletes
PSA has numerous real-world applications stemming from its research heritage, all of which have the ability to give athletes, coaches, and organisations a competitive edge:
- Real-time force/velocity monitoring as an indicator of in-game fatigue.
- Time-dependent heart rate zone classifications to unveil cardiovascular fitness, enabling bespoke training regimes.
- Longitudinal examination of acceleration intensity as a proxy for explosive strength, which correlates with heart rate variability; a useful aid to alert coaching staff to potential underlying cardiac conditions.
- Three-dimensional force vectorisation to uncover physics-based thresholds linked to concussion and musculoskeletal injury.
- Player/squad speed distribution analyses to monitor strength/conditioning improvements with time; also a useful diagnostic for identifying growth and performance trajectories in youth sport.
Our Ongoing Projects
PSA has several research themes that span individual and team disciplines, with the potential for multisport applications, including:
- Heart rate phase recovery times to identify cardiovascular response during matches and training sessions.
- Machine-learning applications of real-time position/speed information to reveal tactical insight against specific opposition.
- Development and use of miniaturised sensors to analyse real-time vectorised force metrics, enabling mathematics-based thresholds for concussion/injury risk.
- Closed-loop blood glucose monitoring that includes activity stress (e.g., heart rate) to provide insight on rates of medicine absorption; potential importance for predictive medicinal dosing in athletes.