Geographic Information Retrieval and the World Wide Web: A Match Made in Electronic Space

This article looks at the access to geographic information through a review of information science theory and its application to the WWW. The two most common retrieval systems are information and data retrieval. A retrieval system has seven elements: retrieval models, indexing, match and retrieval, relevance, order, query languages and query specification. The goal of information retrieval is to match the user's needs to the information that is in the system. Retrieval of geographic information is a combination of both information and data retrieval. Aids to effective retrieval of geographic information are: query languages that employ icons and natural language, automatic indexing of geographic information, and standardization of geographic information. One area that has seen an explosion of geographic information retrieval systems (GIR's) is the World Wide Web (WWW). The final section of this article discusses how seven WWW GIR's solve the the problem of matching the user's information needs to the information in the system.

[1]  Ben Shneiderman,et al.  An exploratory evaluation of three interfaces for browsing large hierarchical tables of contents , 1994, TOIS.

[2]  Fangju Wang.  Towards a Natural Language User Interface: An Approach of Fuzzy Query , 1994, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[3]  Nicholas J. Belkin,et al.  Ask for Information Retrieval: Part I. Background and Theory , 1997, J. Documentation.

[4]  Allison Woodruff,et al.  GIPSY: automated geographic indexing of text documents , 1994 .

[5]  Gerald J. Kowalski,et al.  Information Retrieval Systems , 1997, The Information Retrieval Series.

[6]  Gregory B. Newby,et al.  An investigation of the role of navigation for information retrieval , 1992 .

[7]  J A Swets,et al.  Information Retrieval Systems. , 1963, Science.

[8]  Nicholas J. Belkin,et al.  Ask for Information Retrieval: Part II. Results of a Design Study , 1982, J. Documentation.

[9]  Miranda Lee Pao,et al.  Concepts of Information Retrieval , 1989 .

[10]  Y. C. Lee,et al.  An Iconic Query Language for Topological Relationships in GIS , 1995, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[11]  Michael McGill,et al.  Introduction to Modern Information Retrieval , 1983 .

[12]  Ben Shneiderman,et al.  Image-Browser Taxonomy and Guidelines for Designers , 1995, IEEE Softw..

[13]  Ray R. Larson,et al.  Geographic information retrieval and spatial browsing , 1996 .

[14]  Mark J. Carlotto,et al.  Text Attributes and Processing Techniques in Geographical Information Systems , 1995, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[15]  C. J. van Rijsbergen,et al.  Information Retrieval , 1979, Encyclopedia of GIS.