Theme
Geographic Information Retrieval is a hot topic. The realisation that considerable geographic information is contained in unstructured textual documents has led to much research from both the GIScience and Information Science communities. In parallel, methods based around notions of a semantic web which attempt to explicitly encapsulate geographic and other information contained in documents have also been developed, and links between the two areas of research, for example in the development of geographic ontologies, have started to form. However, the field is a relatively young one, and to date has not fully demonstrated its potential. The Geographic Information Retrieval Tutorial at AGILE will seek to capitalise on the strong roots of the GIR community in Europe, by bringing together a set of active academics in the field to deliver a tutorial aimed at all of those interested in the area from both GIScience and Information Science. The tutorial will run over 1 day. It will open with a talk on a state of the art GIR project, before a brief discussion of a shared vocabulary for the day. It will then take the form of a tutorial, focussing on on 4 topics central to geographic information retrieval:
- Toponym grounding and footprint definition
- Spatial and temporal indices for GIR
- Ranking in GIR
- Evaluation strategies
The day will close with a panel discussion on future challenges in GIR.