Real-life events in multimedia: detection, representation, retrieval, and applications

Abstract

First paragraph: The multimedia content that all of us frequently capture with our different multimedia enabled devices (e.g. cameras, smartphones, tablets) is typically the digital residue of a real-life event that unfolded before us, such as a graduation, a trip, a football game, or a natural disaster; it is this real-life event that we try to immortalize through the digital content creation process. Similarly, at an organizational (as opposed to personal) scale, multimedia content such as satellite images and radar signals are often captured in order to document natural or man-induced real-life events, such as weather phenomena or sea pollution incidents. Despite the central role that real-life events play in the generation and also the later interpretation of multimedia content, though, (since, for instance, what is the meaning and the value of a picture of a football field with some players on it, unless we can put it in event-context: which football game was that? And, what exactly happened in that game that makes it special?) the organization and retrieval of multimedia content are yet to fully embrace event-centric methodologies.