GeoIRIS: Geospatial information retrieval and indexing system-content mining, semantics modeling, and complex queries

Searching for relevant knowledge across heterogeneous geospatial databases requires an extensive knowledge of the semantic meaning of images, a keen eye for visual patterns, and efficient strategies for collecting and analyzing data with minimal human intervention. In this paper, we present our recently developed content-based multimodal Geospatial Information Retrieval and Indexing System (GeoIRIS) which includes automatic feature extraction, visual content mining from large-scale image databases, and high-dimensional database indexing for fast retrieval. Using these underpinnings, we have developed techniques for complex queries that merge information from heterogeneous geospatial databases, retrievals of objects based on shape and visual characteristics, analysis of multiobject relationships for the retrieval of objects in specific spatial configurations, and semantic models to link low-level image features with high-level visual descriptors. GeoIRIS brings this diverse set of technologies together into a coherent system with an aim of allowing image analysts to more rapidly identify relevant imagery. GeoIRIS is able to answer analysts' questions in seconds, such as "given a query image, show me database satellite images that have similar objects and spatial relationship that are within a certain radius of a landmark."