Video Assisted Geographical Information Systems

In recent years the communities working on geographic information systems (GIS) and multimedia applications have developed highly advanced technologies which are specialized and well accepted in their respective domains. Until recently the functionalities offered by these applications have not been integrated to build a video enabled geographic information system. This paper investigates possible synergies from both of these research fields to enhance currently existing applications. A short overview of relevant standardization efforts for data and metadata is given and the concept of smart media objects is described. To demonstrate the concept, this paper describes a number of use cases and applications of such video assisted GIS in the area of multimedia archives and territorial networks.