Geographic Information Retrieval
Encyclopedia
Geographic information retrieval (GIR) or geographical information retrieval is the augmentation of information retrieval
with geographic metadata.
Information retrieval generally views documents as a collection or `bag' of words. In contrast, geographic information retrieval requires a small amount of semantic data to be present (namely a location or geographic feature associated with a document).
Because of this it is common in GIR to separate the text indexing and analysis from the geographic indexing.
GIR systems can commonly be broken down into the following stages: GeoTagging
, text and Geographic indexing, data storage, geographic relevance ranking (wrt a geographic query) and browsing results (commonly with a map interface).
. A few tools offer this kind of capabilities, including GeoLocator and MetaCarta
's GeoTagger.
After identifying location references in text, a GIR system must index this information for search and retrieval. Only a few such systems exist: Google Maps
, Tumba, MetaCarta
's Geographic text search (GTS) system, and the EU-funded SPIRIT (spatially aware information retrieval on the Internet) project.
style evaluation forum for GIR systems and provided participants a chance to compare systems.
This paper by Andras Kornai
describes issues involved in Evaluating geographic information retrieval http://www.metacarta.com/docs/clef2005gir.pdf systems.
. Due to the success of the workshop it was repeated in 2005 and 2008 at CIKM and 2006 at SIGIR
and as a standalone workshop in 2010.
In 2003 a workshop on geographic references was held in conjunction with HLT-NAACL in Edmonton, Canada. Proceedings of the HLT-NAACL Symposium (hosted by MetaCarta
)
Information retrieval
Information retrieval is the area of study concerned with searching for documents, for information within documents, and for metadata about documents, as well as that of searching structured storage, relational databases, and the World Wide Web...
with geographic metadata.
Information retrieval generally views documents as a collection or `bag' of words. In contrast, geographic information retrieval requires a small amount of semantic data to be present (namely a location or geographic feature associated with a document).
Because of this it is common in GIR to separate the text indexing and analysis from the geographic indexing.
GIR systems can commonly be broken down into the following stages: GeoTagging
GeoTagging
Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as a geotagged photograph or video, websites, SMS messages, QR Codes or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata...
, text and Geographic indexing, data storage, geographic relevance ranking (wrt a geographic query) and browsing results (commonly with a map interface).
GIR systems
GIR involves extracting and resolving the meaning of locations in unstructured text. This is known as GeoparsingGeoparsing
Geoparsing is the process of assigning geographic identifiers to textual words and phrases that occur in unstructured content, such as "twenty miles north east of Jalalabad". You can also geoparse location references from other forms of media, for example audio content in which a speaker mentions...
. A few tools offer this kind of capabilities, including GeoLocator and MetaCarta
MetaCarta
MetaCarta is aprivate company providing geographic solutions since 2001. Their headquarters are in Cambridge, MA with additional offices located in Washington DC; Houston, TX; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA; and New York, NY.-History:...
's GeoTagger.
After identifying location references in text, a GIR system must index this information for search and retrieval. Only a few such systems exist: Google Maps
Google Maps
Google Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, free , that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API...
, Tumba, MetaCarta
MetaCarta
MetaCarta is aprivate company providing geographic solutions since 2001. Their headquarters are in Cambridge, MA with additional offices located in Washington DC; Houston, TX; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA; and New York, NY.-History:...
's Geographic text search (GTS) system, and the EU-funded SPIRIT (spatially aware information retrieval on the Internet) project.
Evaluation
In 2005 the Cross-Language Evaluation Forum added a geographic track: GeoCLEF. GeoCLEF was the first TRECText Retrieval Conference
The Text REtrieval Conference is an on-going series of workshops focusing on a list of different information retrieval research areas, or tracks. It is co-sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity , and began in 1992...
style evaluation forum for GIR systems and provided participants a chance to compare systems.
This paper by Andras Kornai
Andras Kornai
András Kornai is a well-known mathematical linguist. He earned his mathematics PhD in 1983 from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest where his advisor was Miklós Ajtai...
describes issues involved in Evaluating geographic information retrieval http://www.metacarta.com/docs/clef2005gir.pdf systems.
Workshops
In 2004 Chris Jones and Ross Purves held the first GIR workshop at SIGIRSIGIR
SIGIR may refer to:* Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction* Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval, a Special Interest Group of the Association for Computing Machinery concerned about information retrieval...
. Due to the success of the workshop it was repeated in 2005 and 2008 at CIKM and 2006 at SIGIR
SIGIR
SIGIR may refer to:* Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction* Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval, a Special Interest Group of the Association for Computing Machinery concerned about information retrieval...
and as a standalone workshop in 2010.
In 2003 a workshop on geographic references was held in conjunction with HLT-NAACL in Edmonton, Canada. Proceedings of the HLT-NAACL Symposium (hosted by MetaCarta
MetaCarta
MetaCarta is aprivate company providing geographic solutions since 2001. Their headquarters are in Cambridge, MA with additional offices located in Washington DC; Houston, TX; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA; and New York, NY.-History:...
)