Semantic Search over Structured Environmental and Geographic Data

Abstract

In this paper we describe a single-field intelligent search approach to complex structured environmental and spatial data. A robust architecture is presented, supporting the topical, spatial and temporal dimensions of the single-field search interface. The major innovation lays in an intelligent search expansion based on semantic knowledge in the field of the domain. There is a major difference in comparison to single-field search engines supporting un- or semistructured document data like Lucene, Google etc. is that the system allows for dynamic access to structured spatial and non-spatial data retrieved dynamically from a database based on modern semantic technologies developed under the THESEUS research program of the German Ministry BMWi. The paper is structured as follows. First we give an introduction and some background information about the systems and the domain we are addressing as well as about the research programm. In order to describe the advantages and differences for the user, we provide an user’s perspective on the system we envision. The main part of the paper provides an architecture including the main components and the approach followed to achieve our goals.