Extensive overview of an ontology-based architecture for accessing multi-format information for disaster management

The collection and dissemination of increasing quantities of information representing multiple digital media objects are promising, combined with a number of technical advances in ICT. Even though the information is maintained and distributed by different owners, systems, formats and locations, their contents might tell the same story, share the same space-time extension, and they might be closely related to each other. Previous efforts in information retrieval and integration have been limited to classical keyword-based and content-based indexing and querying for multiple media documents. Furthermore, the concept-based approach, which is becoming a very popular method, still focuses on specific single media documents. Thus, a concept-based system architecture that allows access to information in multiple format - text, image and graphic, audio, video and spatial information - within heterogeneous sources is presented in this paper. This architecture conforms to the Service Oriented Architecture standards and is designed with the use of ontologies in order to comprehend the semantic matchmaking between users´ queries and multi-format information through metadata. The basis of the ontology model is already in place, but the architecture still undergoes its incremental progress as a research prototype within the disaster management domain.