Media Analysis Management Interface Incubator Group Charter

The mission of the Media Analysis Management Interface Incubator Group, part of the Incubator Activity, is to discuss the requirements and determine the feasibility of the "Media Analysis Management Interface" which consists of the data model and exchange protocol for the analysis data of various media, such as video images, RFID sensor data, and so on.

This interface enables understanding the real world at low cost using analysis engines such as video image processing engines, sensor data analysis engines, and so on. Thus, we will be able to provide various services such as physical security service, environmental load reduction service and intelligent accessibility service easily.

Join the Media Analysis Management Interface Incubator Group.

End date	13 December 2011
Confidentiality	Proceedings are public
Initial Chairs	Nobuhisa Shiraishi (NEC Corporation)
Initiating Members	NEC Corporation Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. (NTT) Fujitsu Limited
Usual Meeting Schedule	Primary communication: Email Teleconferences: As needed Face-to-face: 5-6 per year

Scope

Objective

The objective of this incubator group is as follows:

It is important to standardize the interface of analysis data for applications and analysis engines to provide various services at low cost. For example, to realize physical security services, environmental load reduction services or intelligent accessibility services, it is necessary to understand the real world by various analysis engines such as video image processing engines and sensor data analysis engines. We standardize the "media analysis management interface" which consists of the data model and exchange protocol for analysis data to accelerate expansion of services that use media analysis data.

Position of this interface

To realize the objective described above, we introduce the "analysis data manager" between applications and analysis engines, and determine the analysis data manager and various analysis engines as the "metadata integration platform"(MIP) which integrates the analysis data and provides them to applications. We introduce the following two interfaces as the media analysis management interface:

External interface (Interface for applications):
The external interface is the interface through which applications retrieve analysis data from MIP. Through the external interface, applications can clip the required data from analysis data managed in MIP.
Internal interface (Interface for analysis engines):
The internal interface is the interface through which the analysis data manager receives analysis data from various analysis engines. Through the internal interface, the analysis data manager stores and manages the analysis data retrieved from various analysis engines.

Merits of this interface

This interface will provide the following merits:

For application developers:
Application developers can develop various applications that use analysis data without tightly collaborating with analysis engine developers, needing only to understand this interface.
For analysis engine developers:
Analysis engine developers don't have to adapt to each proprietary interface of various applications, needing only to adapt to this interface.

Requirements for this interface

The requirements for this interface are as follow:

Conceal the specific algorithms of analysis engines from applications.
Provide the data model that can express analysis data universally among various domains of things to analyze in the real world.
Provide the method for applications to clip the required data from the results of the real world analysis.

Issues of this interface

We will study the following issues of this interface:

Universal data model
The data model that can express analysis data independently of each analysis engine. We study the data model referring to existing data expression frameworks such as XML, RDF and so on. We also study a framework for defining vocabularies to interoperate among various analysis data domains.
Analysis data exchange protocol
The protocol for exchanging analysis data among applications, the analysis data manager, and various analysis engines. We study a format for the request and response to clip the required data from the results of the real world analysis. We study the protocol on existing protocols such as HTTP, JSON, and so on.

Deliverables

This incubator group will publish the following documents:

The study report on media analysis management interface
A report on the study of the universal data model and the analysis data exchange protocol which enable applications to utilize the analysis data which is processed by various analysis engines.
The statement of use cases and requirements
A statement which shows several concrete use cases to which this interface will be applied and the requirements of interface in these use cases.

Dependencies and Liaisons

We study the requirements and feasibility of the media analysis management interface referring following other standardization groups.

W3C Groups

Media Fragments WG: Jointly discuss the use cases of the fragments of video images as a kind of services which use real world analysis.

Semantic Web Activity: Use RDF as the basic framework to express the real world analysis data.

Geolocation WG: Refer as the API to access location data based on real world analysis.

Multimodal Interaction WG: Refer as the client-side platform to access the real world analysis data.

Device APIs and Policy WG: Refer as the API to access the client-side devices to analyze the real world.

Media Annotations WG: Refer the cross-community data integration ontologies for interoperability of various kinds of real world analysis data.

External Groups

MPEG-7: Refer the data model defined in MPEG-7 as vocabularies for video image analysis.

IETF: An open standards organization which develops and promotes Internet standards, cooperating closely with the W3C and ISO/IEC standards bodies and dealing in particular with standards of the TCP/IP and Internet protocol suite.

Participation

We welcome people who have interest in the media analysis management interface, including application developers and analysis engine developers as members of this incubator group. The members of this incubator group should attend the tele-conferences and face-to-face meetings of this incubator group.

Communication

This group primarily conducts its work on the public mailing list public-xg-mami@w3.org (archive). The group's Member-only list is member-xg-mami@w3.org (archive).

Information about the group (deliverables, participants, face-to-face meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the Media Analysis Management Interface Incubator Group home page.

Decision Policy

As explained in the Process Document (section 3.3), this group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus. When the Chair puts a question and observes dissent, after due consideration of different opinions, the Chair should record a decision (possibly after a formal vote) and any objections, and move on.

Patent Policy

This Incubator Group provides an opportunity to share perspectives on the topic addressed by this charter. W3C reminds Incubator Group participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While the Incubator Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Incubator Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply.

Incubator Groups have as a goal to produce work that can be implemented on a Royalty Free basis, as defined in the W3C Patent Policy.

For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

About this Charter

This charter for the Media Analysis Management Interface Incubator Group has been created according to the Incubator Group Procedures documentation. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

Nobuhisa Shiraishi, NEC Corporation

$Date: 2010/12/15 17:27:05 $