Geographic Search Engine Hierarchical Graph Structure
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing geographic search systems fail to effectively organize and present search results in a hierarchical manner, making it difficult for users to navigate and understand the spatial relationships between locations mentioned in documents, and they lack the ability to provide additional relevant information beyond document-location tuples.
Innovation Solution
The system organizes search results into a hierarchical graph structure based on spatial relationships, allowing users to view documents and their locations in a structured format, and performs additional queries to provide statistically interesting phrases and location-related information, enhancing user understanding and relevance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If search results are presented as flat lists of document-location tuples, then the system is simple to implement, but users cannot effectively navigate and understand spatial relationships between locations
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments search results into hierarchical groups based on spatial relationships between locations. Instead of presenting a flat list, results are organized into parent-child relationships where parent nodes represent broader geographic regions and child nodes represent specific locations, enabling users to navigate through hierarchical levels to understand spatial context.
Solution Approach 2:
The system adds a hierarchical dimension to the traditional flat search result presentation. By organizing results into multiple hierarchical levels (parent nodes representing geographic regions, child nodes representing specific locations), the system transforms a one-dimensional list into a multi-dimensional hierarchical structure that reveals spatial relationships.
2Loss of information
If the system only provides document-location tuples, then the system is simple and fast, but it lacks the ability to provide additional relevant information
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-computing and storing hierarchical relationships between locations, spatial contexts, and statistically interesting phrases before user queries are submitted. This preprocessing enables the system to quickly retrieve and present enriched information including geographic hierarchies and relevant phrases without adding significant query response time.
Solution Approach 2:
The system introduces intermediary components including hierarchical graph structures that mediate between raw search results and user presentation, and statistical analysis modules that identify interesting phrases. These intermediaries enrich the information by adding spatial context and highlighting relevant patterns while maintaining efficient information retrieval through structured organization.
3Loss of information
If search results are organized hierarchically with additional statistical information, then user understanding is improved, but the processing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements self-service by automatically computing hierarchical relationships and identifying statistically interesting phrases from the search results without requiring manual intervention. The system autonomously analyzes spatial patterns, constructs hierarchical graphs, and presents enriched information, reducing the need for complex manual processing while maintaining high information quality.
Data Source
AI summary
Under one aspect, an interface program stored on a computer-readable medium causes a computer system with a display device to perform the functions of: accepting search criteria from a user, the search criteria including a domain identifier identifying a domain and a free text query entry; in response to accepting said search criteria from the user, receiving a set of document-location tuples from a corpus of documents, wherein each document: (a) contains information that is responsive to the free text query entry; and (b) contains location-related information that refers to a location within the domain; requesting and receiving a result from an additional query based at least in part on the domain identifier, the result not being a document-location tuple; and displaying a visual representation of at least a subset of the document-location tuples and a visual representation of the result of the additional query on the display device.