timeannotated

Timeannotated is a data annotation paradigm that attaches precise temporal metadata to content and events, enabling the representation and querying of time-aware information. It is used across multimedia, text, sensor data, and logs.

Timeannotated data goes beyond simple timestamps by incorporating intervals, durations, confidence scores, and time zone information. It supports start_time and end_time fields, or continuous intervals, and can express uncertainty with probability ranges or fuzzy timestamps.

Formats and models: commonly uses ISO 8601 for times and durations; JSON, JSON-LD, XML, RDF to encode time annotations; data models include fields such as start_time, end_time, duration, time_zone, and confidence. Tools include annotation platforms, labeling pipelines, and crowd-sourcing workflows.

Applications: video captioning with exact timing; audio transcripts; annotated news archives for temporal search; surveillance and IoT sensor event annotation; scientific experiments with time-aligned results; provenance tracking of data processing steps.

Challenges: time normalization across zones and calendars; handling missing or uncertain times; scalability with large streams; alignment between disparate data sources; privacy and bias in annotations.

See also: time-stamping, temporal databases, event annotation, timeline data, annotation formats.