Representation and processing of information related to real world events

In this paper, we discuss a formal system for representing and analyzing real world events. The event representation discussed in this paper accounts for three important event attributes, namely, time, space, and label. We introduce the notion of sequence templates that appears natural for capturing event related semantics; and in semantically analyzing user queries. To harness this potential, we present a formal structure to represent the queries related to real world events as well as an approach to semantically analyze a user query, and collate event related information to be dispatched to the user. Finally, we discuss the design and implementation of the Query-Event Analysis System (QEAS), which is an integrated system to (a) identify a best-matching sequence template(s) given a user query; (b) derive the meta-events based on the selected sequence templates; and (c) and use the meta-event information to answer the user query. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.