SBIR Phase II: Hybrid Question Answering Combining a Search Index with an RDF Store

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目将提供对结构化和非结构化信息的集成、无缝访问。目前还没有一种简单的方法可以跨结构化数据库和非结构化文本文档执行单一的联邦搜索，而且开发不同数据源上的复杂应用程序需要大量的时间和精力。多语言混合问答（HQA）引擎将改变人们访问异构数据的方式，通过数据库中的语义模型和产品文献、呼叫中心数据、社交媒体等搜索索引中的自由文本来回答复杂的问题。HQA将回答广泛的问题，包括事实、程序、解释和场景匹配。用户还将能够发现事实、事件之间的关系和情绪；确定趋势并进行预测。最后，为了保证高精度，HQA将处理包括英语在内的11种语言的信息。英语HQA系统的最低MRR为70%，其他10种语言的MRR为60%。该项目的广泛影响/商业潜力涉及几个关键领域。HQA引擎将超越现有的问答技术，通过在结构化和非结构化数据源中找到的信息来回答广泛的复杂问题。基于社交媒体的应用程序，如趋势发现、情感检测和预测分析，在国际市场上运营，将极大地受益于多语言HQA系统的可用性。客户关系管理（CRM）、商业智能和社交媒体是受益于HQA引擎发展的主要商业应用。这项技术的影响将使企业能够更好地了解客户的需求和动机，从而与客户建立更加个性化的关系。传统的商业关系将变得更加敏感，从而产生更多的理解和信任，这将减轻由糟糕的预测模型造成的金融市场的破坏性大波动。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will provide integrated, seamless access to structured and unstructured information. At present there is no easy way to perform a single federated search across structured databases and unstructured text documents, and complex applications over diverse data sources require considerable time and effort to develop. The multilingual Hybrid Question Answering (HQA) engine will change the way people access heterogeneous data by answering complex questions over semantic models from the database and free text from the search indexes of product literature, call center data, social media, etc. HQA will answer a broad range of questions including factoid, procedural, explanation and scenario-matching. Users will also be able to discover facts, relationships among events, and sentiments; to identify trends and enable predictions. Finally, to ensure high precision, HQA will process information in its native form for 11 languages, including English. A minimum score of 70% MRR is expected for the English HQA system and 60% MRR for the other 10 languages.The broader impact/commercial potential of this project spans several key areas. The HQA engine will surpass existing Questioning Answering technology by answering a wide range of complex questions with information found in both structured and unstructured data sources. Social media-based applications such as trend finding, sentiment detection, and predictive analysis operating in international markets will greatly benefit from the availability of the multi-lingual HQA system.Customer Relation Management (CRM), Business Intelligence and Social Media are among the primary commercial applications benefiting from the development of the HQA engine. The impact of this technology will result in businesses being able to develop more personalized relationships with customers as a result of a better understanding of customer needs and motivations. Traditional business relationships will become more responsive, resulting in greater understanding and trust, which will mitigate destructive, wide swings in financial markets caused by poor predictive models.