EMR 2015 - 2nd International Workshop on Environmental Multimedia Retrieval 2015

The rapid advancements of digital technologies, as well as the availability of digital cameras and sensors have resulted in a great increase of multimedia data production worldwide. This is also the case for multimedia data that describe the state of the environment, which include huge amounts of data streams from models, stations, amateur sensors and cameras, as well as visual environmental information (e.g. heatmaps, forest satellite and underwater images). In parallel, the success of citizen sciences and social networking tools has fostered the emergence of large communities of nature observers (e.g. e-bird, Tela Botanica, Digital Fishers , etc.), who produce large collections of biodiversity multimedia records. Citizens have become increasingly aware of the important role that environmental data (e.g. weather forecast, life species distributions) play on health issues (e.g. allergies) and to a variety of other human activities (e.g. agriculture). In addition, such data are very critical for important environmental phenomena (e.g. greenhouse effect, the climate change, etc).
Therefore, there is an increasing need for the research and development of advanced techniques for analysing and interpreting environmental data provided in multimedia formats. This will allow for the development of personalised applications that will take into account the state of the environment and the human health conditions. In addition, the production of accurate and timely knowledge of other living species, which is essential for a sustainable development of humanity and for biodiversity conservation, will be facilitated. Automated event retrieval and video summarization techniques will also be very useful for advancing the state of the art in biology and marine environment research.