CORDIS Archive

IST Call 7
This Action Line is now closed! - Deadline 17 October 2001

Excerpt from the IST Work Programme 2001

III.4 Information access, filtering, analysis and handling (IAF)

The World Wide Web is becoming a major vehicle for the distribution and delivery of multimedia content including video and audio, accessible from stationary (including domestic) and mobile platforms. It is, however, necessary to impose more semantic structure on Web content in order to facilitate, for example, resource and knowledge discovery, information filtering and intelligent browsing. It is, in short, necessary to make Web content machine understandable. Given the sheer size and dynamics of the Web this can only be achieved through highly automated procedures.

IST2001 - III.4.1 Semantic Web technologies

Objectives

To enable users to access, retrieve and filter information from the Web, relevant to their interests and needs, and matching their quality expectations. This requires new and advanced methods, models, tools and systems for services related to access, retrieval and filtering of Web-based content, in particular the development of new search systems and machines, in line with existing and emerging relevant standards. These services would typically be provided by intelligent agents.

Focus

This Action Line focuses on content technologies that contribute to the creation and exploitation of the Semantic Web. It invites projects that develop, apply and benchmark these technologies in a Web context. They include:

• Methods and tools for coding and structuring digital content, for defining and declaring its semantics. These would typically employ XML, RDF and other techniques for semantic interoperability and reasoning such as ontologies for domain specific applications.
• Methods and tools for the derivation of semantic attributes of Web-based content (in particular video, audio and images) through, for example,. automatic feature detection, video segmentation and post-processing. This would facilitate multimedia indexing based on content analysis as well as automated categorization of Web resources.
• Semantics based tools for knowledge discovery and intelligent filtering and profiling such as information agents and specific query languages. Semantics based tools for collaborative filtering and knowledge sharing in specific or general user communities.
• Information visualisation: intelligent and visual interfaces which take advantage of semantic information structures to provide users with radical new ways to navigate and search naturally through unknown and complex information spaces.

Issues to be addressed by projects under this Action Line include the sustainability and scalability of the proposed approaches concerning, for example, metadata repositories and ontologies. Projects may also wish to focus specifically on the constraints and special requirements of domestic platforms (such as WebTV) and mobile platforms (such as WAP and UMTS) for Web access, and their user communities. Ease of access as well as scalability and presentation of content are likely to be the main challenges here. Moreover, the integration of geographic information into Web-based service environments could greatly benefit the usability of mobile platforms.

Types of Actions addressed

Research and Development, Demonstration, Combined projects, Thematic Networks

Links with WP2000

New Action Line

Projects selected

CORES, ESPERONTO, INDICO, MONET, , SCHEMA, SCULPTEUR, SEWASIE, SPACEMANTIX, SPIRIT, SWAD-EUROPE, SWAP, WIDE, WISPER

Last updated: 21|02|2003