My Research

The objective of my PhD project is the development of a generic approach to the abstract problem of the assessment of Geographic Relevance. GR is a rather recent concept that can be defined as a quality of an entity in geographic space or its representation in an information system, i.e. an object, document, or image. This quality is expressed as the relation between an entity (or its representation) and the actual context of using the representation.

More pragmatically, Geographic Relevance aims to assess the relevance of an object that is a representation of a geographic entity within a computer system or information database. This object can be a collection of documents or an entry in a database describing a point of interest. Still, even if the object is a single document, the objective is to approximate the relevance of the entity, not to judge the relevance of a geo-referenced document or a document reporting geographic information. Considering this facet, Geographic Relevance is rather far from the current understanding that underlies Geographic IR, Mobile IR and IR systems in general.

This generic approach can then be applied to different practical problem — from tourism application to emergency systems — to support the spatial decision making process, for example, adapting digital mobile maps enhancing the saliency of relevant entities.

Thus far, my work has been mostly focused on the criteria of Geographic Relevance. That is, the study of the criteria needed to judge the geographic relevance of an entity in a given usage contex, including: the study of the applicability of the criteria commonly used in IR, Geographic IR, Mobile IR, Location-Based Services, and Geographic Information Science; the study of the importance of those criteria in the scope of GR; and the study of the applicability of Geographic Data Mining and Time Geography techniques.