Fach-, raum- und zeitbezogene Katalogisierung und Recherche von Umweltinformationen auf dem Internet

The amount and quality of information available on the Internet increases s teadily. To enhance the search and retrieval of this information, meta-information systems are being d eveloped. Unlike earlier search engines, their search mechanisms base upon meta-information (i.e., information on the information to be searched for) rather than the information itself. Users can benefit from this approach in two ways: Firstly, they are provided with new types of queries; secondly, the quality of retrieval results is improved. This paper presents a metainformation system which is particularly designed for environmental i nformation. It allows to make use of semantic, spatial, and temporal relationships for the search and retrieval process. Besides concepts, this paper primarily presents a comprehensive description of an already implemented and running prototype.