SEO-DWARF: Semantic EO Data Web Alert and Retrieval Framework: the Project Overview

Technological advances in remote sensing have increased the availability of satellite images with different spatiotemporal
and spectral characteristics.There is difficulty for retrieving the most appropriate data for each user's needs.One key
challenge is to connect the quantitative information of the EO images with the qualitative (high-level user queries) and be
able to mine these connections in big archives.An inherent question arises; how to retrieve EO images based on user
semantically aware questions.Content based EO image retrieval techniques have been introduced for bridging the gap
between low-level image features and high-level queries.The main constraint of the existing approaches is the generalization
of the problem.The formulated ontologies are not focused on the constraints of EO images.The main objective of SEO-DWARF
is to realize the content-based search of EO images on an application specific basis.The marine application domain
and data from Sentinels 1,2,3, ENVISAT will be used.Queries such as “Calculate the rate of increasing chlorophyll in the
NATURA area” will be answered by the SEO-DWARF, helping users to retrieve the appropriate EO images for their specific
needs or alert them when a specific phenomenon occurs.The research contains the:a) ontology formalization for the specific
research topics,b) determination of the semantic queries for the application domains,c) algorithm development for extracting
metadata from the EO images,d) design of an architecture of the platform to perform the semantic image retrieval and
storage and management of the extracted metadata.All four aspects will be integrated in an innovative and user-friendly web
based platform enabling the users to retrieve images for marine applications or register for a semantic alert.