Special issue introduction: Spatial approaches to information search

Searching for information is a ubiquitous activity, performed in a variety of contexts and supported by rapidly evolving technologies. As a process, information search often has a spatial aspect: spatial metaphors help users refer to abstract contents, and geo-referenced information grounds entities in physical space. Although information search is a major research topic in computer science, GIScience and cognitive psychology, this intrinsic spatiality has not received enough attention. This article reviews research opportunities at the crossroad of three research strands, which are (1) computational, (2) geospatial, and (3) cognitive. The articles in this special issue focus on interface design for spatio-temporal information, on the search for qualitative spatial configurations, and on a big-data analysis of the spatial relation “near”.

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