PhotoMap: from location and time to context-aware photo annotations

Abstract

Despite the growth of geotagged multimedia data on the Web, spatial and temporal metadata are still poorly exploited by Web search engines and multimedia systems. Interpretation and inference processes can enlarge these metadata towards high quality information that are useful for annotating multimedia automatically. In this article, we propose a semi-automatic approach for annotating personal photos based on the use of OWL-DL ontologies together with the next generation of mobile devices. We present an ontology called ContextPhoto and a contextual photo annotation approach which improve the development of more efficient personal image management tools. ContextPhoto provides concepts for representing captured and inferred context information reusing Web standards that describe spatial, temporal and social networking data. In order to validate the context annotation process we propose, we have also designed and developed a mobile and Web location-based system. This new system, called PhotoMap, is an evolution of the related mobile annotation systems since it provides automatic annotation about the spatial, temporal and social contexts of a photo. We also present a demonstration of the PhotoMap application during a tourist tour in the city of Rome.