science

Geographic information retrieval

Geographic information retrieval is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Geographic information retrieval rather than just read about it. In short: Geographic information retrieval (GIR) or geographical information retrieval systems are search tools for searching the Web, enterprise documents, and mobile local search that combine traditional text-based queries with location querying, such as a map or placenames. Like traditional information retrieval systems, GIR systems index text and information from structured and unstructured documents, and also augment tho…

Key takeaways

Geographic information retrieval belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Geographic information retrieval to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Geographic information retrieval from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Geographic information retrieval (GIR) or geographical information retrieval systems are search tools for searching the Web, enterprise documents, and mobile local search that combine traditional text-based queries with location querying, such as a map or placenames. Like traditional information retrieval systems, GIR systems index text and information from structured and unstructured documents, and also augment those indices with geographic information. The development and engineering of GIR systems aims to build systems that can reliably answer queries that include a geographic dimension, such as "What wars were fought in Greece?" or "restaurants in Beirut". Semantic similarity and word-sense disambiguation are important components of GIR. To identify place names, GIR systems often rely on natural language processing or other metadata to associate text documents with locations. Such georeferencing, geotagging, and geoparsing tools often need databases of location names, known as gazetteers.

GIR architecture GIR involves extracting and resolving the meaning of locations in unstructured text. This is known as geoparsing. After identifying mentions of places and locations in text, a GIR system indexes this information for search and retrieval. GIR systems can commonly be broken down into the following stages: geoparsing, text and geographic indexing, data storage, geographic relevance ranking with respect to a geographic query and browsing results commonly with a map interface. Some GIR systems separate text indexing from geographic indexing, which enables the use of generic database joins, or multi-stage filtering, and others combine them for efficiency. GIR must manage several forms of uncertainty, including semantic ambiguity of mentions of places in natural language text and position precision.

GIR systems MetaCarta created and patented one of the first commercial products to offer GIR capabilities. Frankenplace: a general-purpose geographic search engine. Web-a-where

Study & Evaluation The study of GIR systems has a rich history dating back to the 1970s and possibly earlier. See Ray Larson’s book Geographic information retrieval and spatial browsing for references to much of the pre-Web literature on GIR. In 2005 the Cross-Language Evaluation Forum added a geographic track, GeoCLEF. GeoCLEF was the first TREC-style evaluation forum for GIR systems and provided participants a chance to compare systems.

Applications GIR has many applications in geoweb, neogeography, and mobile local search and has been a focus of many conferences, including the ESRI Users Conferences and O'Reilly’s Where 2.0 conferences.

References

See also Geographic information system Geoparsing Information retrieval MetaCarta Semantic similarity Search engine (computing) Toponymy

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Geographic information retrieval

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Geographic information retrieval claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Geographic information retrieval before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Geographic information retrieval ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Geographic information retrieval

In research: Geographic information retrieval appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Geographic information retrieval in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Geographic information retrieval is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Geographic data and information, Information retrieval, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Geographic information retrieval outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Geographic information retrieval in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Geographic information retrieval means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Geographic information retrieval out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Geographic information retrieval in simple terms?

Why does Geographic information retrieval matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Geographic information retrieval?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Geographic information retrieval.