Vrochidis, S.S.VrochidisEpitropou, V.V.EpitropouBassoukos, A.A.BassoukosVoth, SaschaSaschaVothKaratzas, K.K.KaratzasMoumtzidou, A.A.MoumtzidouMoßgraber, JürgenJürgenMoßgraberKompatsiaris, I.I.KompatsiarisKarppinen, A.A.KarppinenKukkonen, J.J.Kukkonen2022-03-112022-03-112012https://publica.fraunhofer.de/handle/publica/37662210.1007/978-3-642-33412-2_372-s2.0-84870893520Analysis of environmental information is considered of utmost importance for humans, since environmental conditions are strongly related to health issues and to a variety of everyday activities. Despite the fact that there are already many free on-line services providing environmental information, there are several cases, in which the presentation format complicates the extraction and processing of such data. A very characteristic example is the air quality forecasts, which are usually encoded in image maps of heterogeneous formats, while the initial (numerical) pollutant concentrations, calculated and predicted by a relevant model, remain unavailable. This work addresses the task of semi-automatic extraction of such information based on a template configuration tool, on methodologies for data reconstruction from images, as well as on Optical Character Recognition (OCR) techniques. The framework is tested with a number of air quality forecast heatmaps demonstrating satisfactory results.enenvironmentalair qualityheatmapimage processingOCRdata reconstructiontemplate configuration004670conference paper