The R2I project aims at conceiving methods for interactive search of images in very large datasets (typically one billion images). It is interesting to note that a recent poll done by IFOP-Omnibus in 2006, studying satisfaction of Internet users, highlighted that 96% of them were on the whole satisfied with the services offered but 75% encountered difficulties in searching information2. What is true when searching information in general is even truer for the case of image search, because of the gap existing between keywords used to formulate queries and semantic information carried by images. In this context, R2I will be oriented towards user needs, by designing and combining several tools making the search of images by content easier. These tools will be able to: • extract semantics from images and transform raw data into a semantically rich representation, • cluster similar images and propose visual summaries of search results, • allow user interaction via semantic concepts related to images, • allow the indexation of very large volumes of images. At the end, this project will come up with a very ambitious system for interactive search, able to index about one billion images and able to provide users with advanced interaction capabilities. The partnership between Exalead, leader company on the market of corporate network indexation and specialist of user centric approaches, Imedia, research group internationally recognized for its work on interactive search of multi-media documents, and Lear, which benefits from an international reputation for his work

The main objective of our project is the generation of innovative interfaces to display information according to temporal criteria. Although our goal is closed to applications such as timelines, unlike the latter, we plan to extract and use temporal informations from the texts in order to enrich the foreseen user interfaces. The manipulated objects, called « Event-based Chronologies », prepared from semi-automated position-finding of events and of datative temporal expressions in essentially “breaking news” type texts (written in French and in English), will be associated with visualisation (multimedia) widgets enabling to visualise events associated with a “mediatic event” in chronological order; wherein said event acts somehow as the “trigger” for information search so that said event is presented relative to a context forming the collection of events which may be associated therewith. AFP currently diffuses numerous Event-based Chronologies over a wide range of mediatic events via its information departments. They are currently handled manually, by copying breaking news or documentation transmitted previously and are purely textual (since provided for the press). There are hence unsuited to multimedia, Internet and mobile usage, which has now become the rule. The purpose of this project is to provide a solution to this situation by setting ourselves the global following objectives: 1. Assist semi-automatic construction of these Event-based Chronologies by using NLP (natural language processing) techniques ; 2. View and browse multimedia Event-based Chrononlogies by using visualisation technologies. Our working programme is hence organised quite simply in the light of both these objectives. More precisely, and this the original aspect of our approach from a conceptual angle as well as regards the applications contemplated, we combine items 1. and 2. while suggesting as follows: 1’. on the one hand taking into account the problematic of different levels of temporal referencing, associated with the different types of enunciative and modal managements which can be identified within the texts; 2’. and on the other hand to contemplate the development of tools enabling to anchor events along a “multilevel” temporal visualisation scale. In the first axis, the aim is to generate, in relation to a request (the name of an event, of a person, of a team associated with a competition, etc.), propositions of Event-based Chronologies which the user (the AFP journalist in that particular instance) may optionally modify before validation. This is hence an automatic processing step of the temporality of the texts, which should integrate not only the recognition, but also the analysis of a certain type of discursive organisation in the texts. The second axis concerns the visualisation of Event-based Chronologies, and the target this time is the end-user, i.e. the reader, the internaut or the owner of a multimedia telephone. Even if our project is ambitious, it remains that the work methodology that we suggest makes it “reachable“ in its objectives, in particular regarding the realisation of an effective processing chain. Indeed, we propose to anchor our working programme on the one hand in (i) the specification of a specific need and on the other hand in (ii) a close collaboration between the different partners for defining knowledge representation formats which are compatible with the knowledge extracted from texts as well as with the knowledge corpi to view.