Geographic Information Retrieval: An Overview

Geographic Information Retrieval can be seen as a specialized branch of traditional Information Retrieval. It includes all of the research areas that have traditionally made up the core of research into Information Retrieval, but in addition has an emphasis on spatial and geographic indexing and retrieval. This article present some of the challenges in Geographic Information Retrieval like the ambiguities involved in the use of place names and phrases linking a document to a location and the influence of human perception of and reasoning about space. It also explaines the role of gazetteers, thesauri and ontologies of place names in Geographic Information Retrieval and reviews some relevant projects.