Event visualization in a 3D environment

Semantic event tracker (SET) is an interactive visualization tool for analyzing events (activities) in a three-dimensional environment. We model an event as an object that describes an action, its location, time, and relations to other objects. Real world event information is extracted from Internet sources, then stored and processed using Semantic Web technologies that enable us to discover semantic associations between events. We use RDF graphs to represent semantic metadata and ontologies. SET is capable of visualizing as well as navigating through the event data in all three aspects of space, time and theme. Temporal data is illustrated as a 3D multi-line in the 3D environment that connects consecutive events. The line is marked with user-selectable objects that represent the events being visualized. Upon an event's selection, SET "speaks" to the user semantically associated information via a speech synthesizer. Then, upon the user's verbal command SET can display semantically associated media such as digital images, audio and/or video clips. SET provides access to multi-source, heterogeneous, multimedia data, and is capable of visualizing events that contain geographic and time information.