iRank: Ranking geographical information by conceptual, geographic and topologic similarity

Geographic Information Ranking consists of measuring if a document (answer) is relevant to a spatial query. It is done by comparing characteristics in common between document and query. The most popular approaches compare just one aspect of geographical data (geographic properties, topology, among others). It limits the assessment of document relevance. Nevertheless, it can be improved when key characteristics of geographical objects are considered in the ranking (1) geographical attributes, (2) topological relations, and (3) geographical concepts. In this paper, we outline iRank a method that integrates these three aspects to rank a document. Our approach evaluates documents from three sources of information: GeoOntologies, dictionaries, and topology files. Relevance is measured according to three stages. In the first stage, the relevance is computed by processing concepts; in second stage relevance is calculated using geographic attributes. In the last stage, the relevance is measured by computing topologic relations. Thus, the main contribution of iRank is show that integration of three ranking criteria is better than when they are used in separate way.