Development and evaluation of information retrieval methods to support users with complex information needs

开发和评估信息检索方法以支持具有复杂信息需求的用户

• 批准号: 261439-2013
• 负责人: Vechtomova, Olga
• 金额: $ 1.46万
• 依托单位: University of Waterloo
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2018-01-01 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=667669
• 关键词: Development; evaluation; information; retrieval; methods

Solving complex real world problems usually requires access to large amounts of information. At the start, a user may have little knowledge of the subject domain and may not know what information he needs in order to solve the problem at hand. Currently available search engines are very good at retrieving topically relevant documents in response to a well-defined query. However, if a user does not have a good understanding of the problem domain, and cannot formulate effective queries, then existing search engines are not very helpful. Currently a user with a complex search task, e.g. "What do I need to know to start my own company in Canada?", needs to formulate iteratively several queries, go through large numbers of retrieved documents, and identify important facts, entities (e.g. people, organizations), and their interrelationships in order to obtain the necessary knowledge needed to solve the problem at hand. In the proposed research I will investigate how to provide users with a coherent information seeking experience throughout their complex problem solving processes. This includes the design of methods for finding useful information nuggets, concepts and entities in documents, identifying relationships between them and presenting them in a meaningful and coherent way to the user.****The first goal of my proposed research program is to design and implement information retrieval methods and tools for supporting the whole process of complex problem solving. The second goal is to develop methods for evaluating effectiveness of IR methods in supporting the user's complex problem solving. Evaluation of the developed methods will be done by means of both laboratory and user studies.

解决复杂的真实的世界问题通常需要访问大量的信息。在开始时，用户可能对主题领域知之甚少，并且可能不知道他需要什么信息来解决手头的问题。目前可用的搜索引擎非常擅长检索主题相关的文档，以响应定义良好的查询。然而，如果用户对问题域没有很好的理解，并且不能制定有效的查询，则现有的搜索引擎不是很有帮助。目前有一个复杂的搜索任务的用户，例如：“我需要知道什么才能在加拿大创办自己的公司？“，需要迭代地制定几个查询，遍历大量检索到的文档，并识别重要的事实、实体（例如，人、组织）及其相互关系，以便获得解决手头问题所需的必要知识。在拟议的研究中，我将探讨如何为用户提供一个连贯的信息寻求在他们复杂的问题解决过程中的经验。这包括设计各种方法，以便在文件中找到有用的信息、概念和实体，确定它们之间的关系，并以有意义和连贯的方式向用户介绍它们。我提出的研究计划的第一个目标是设计和实现信息检索方法和工具，以支持复杂问题解决的整个过程。第二个目标是开发方法来评估IR方法在支持用户解决复杂问题方面的有效性。将通过实验室和用户研究对所开发的方法进行评价。