E - A Generic Event Model for Event-Centric Multimedia Data Management in eChronicle Applications

eChronicle applications are inherently event-centric, enabling users to find and explore important events in an application domain and providing unified access to any media that document them. Today’s multimedia data management components such as multimedia databases, however, are largely media-centric, considering events - if at all - just as one of many pieces of media metadata. Obfuscating event exploration and event-driven access to media, they are only of limited use for the implementation of eChronicle applications. Using a concrete eChronicle application in the defense domain, this paper motivates the need for event-centric multimedia data management components. As a foundation, the paper proposes the multimedia event model and discusses essential design considerations for the development of that model. E’s genericity and profound adaptability to varying application needs make the model a suitable foundation for reusable multimedia data management components that are useful not only for eChronicle applications, but for any multimedia application where event-driven access to content is of interest.