1. A method for evaluating data from a network of sensors, wherein the method comprises: analyzing data received from at least one sensor using exemplar-based sparse representation processing to create a sparse representation of the data; determining at least one discrete sparse characteristic of an event in the data received from the at least one sensor based on the sparse representation of the data; and evaluating the at least one discrete sparse characteristic of an event in the data to to perform at least one task associated with the representation of the event in the data; wherein at least one of the steps is carried out by a computer device.