Monitoring moving objects using uncertain web data

A number of applications deal with monitoring moving objects: cars, aircrafts, ships, persons, etc. Traditionally, this requires capturing data from sensor networks, image or video analysis, or using other application-specific resources. We show in this demonstration paper how Web content can be exploited instead to gather information (trajectories, metadata) about moving objects. As this content is marred with uncertainty and inconsistency, we develop a methodology for estimating uncertainty and filtering the resulting data. We present as an application a demonstration of a system that constructs trajectories of ships from social networking data, presenting to a user inferred trajectories, meta-information, as well as uncertainty levels on extracted information and trustworthiness of data providers.