The overall objective of the FERMI project is:
The logic developed within the project will constitute the theoretical basis of information systems supporting the storage and retrieval of multimedia documents, that is, complex documents possibly including text, graphics, images, video, sound and the like.
We propose to develop a theory of the representation and reasoning on the structure and content of complex documents and queries, to develop a theory of the imprecision inherent in the information retrieval process, and to develop a theory of the semantic content of multimedia documents; the first will adopt features of Terminological Logics, Relevance Logics, Modal Logics and Fuzzy Logics, the second on Probability Theory and the Dempster-Shafer Theory of Evidence, while the third will be based mainly on the theory of Conceptual Graphs. We also propose to integrate the three theories we will have developed into a unified Multimedia Information Retrieval Logic (hereafter referred to as the MIRLOG logic), whose expressive power will allow an adequate representation of complex multimedia documents and queries, and whose relation of logical consequence will model a dynamic and effective retrieval of those, and only those, documents that are relevant to the user's information needs.
The central idea of the project is that the retrieval of a multimedia
document in response to a user request can, and indeed should, be seen as
the result of checking the validity of the formula of the
MIRLOG logic, where
is the representation of the document,
is the
representation of the user request, and ``
'' is the notion of
implication formalized by MIRLOG.
In order to adequately model the retrieval of multimedia documents, the
logic we are seeking will have to satisfy a number of requirements. First,
the logic must be able to support the representation and reasoning about a
number of different aspects of multimedia documents (e.g. those that relate
to the structure, the layout and the content of the document,
respectively). Second, the logical consequence relation of the MIR logic
must capture the notion of ``likely relevance'' typical of information
retrieval, a discipline that inherently deals with imprecision: that
is, is valid in the logic if and only if the document
represented by
is likely to be relevant to the information needs
expressed by the user through the request represented by
. Third,
mechanisms have to be enforced in order for the inferential behaviour of the
MIRLOG logic to be adaptive, i.e. sensitive to the dynamic nature of
relevance. Finally, the problem of deciding whether
in
MIRLOG must be computationally tractable, that is, solvable with a limited
amount of resources.