III: Small: Information Chain Support for Disaster Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery

当灾难发生时，决策者和公众的当务之急是整合分散的、可能是混乱和不完整的信息，然后规划下一步行动。作出决定或制定政策所需的信息很可能不是由单一文件或单一文本提供的，而是存在于多个来源中。换言之，一份文件可以得到其他文件的补充或进一步阐述，所有这些文件作为一个整体才能提供一个完整和令人满意的答案。该项目将打造一条新的应急管理支持信息链。InfoChain预计将通过自动连接信息中的点来显著改进政策制定者/决策者、灾害研究人员和普通公众搜索与紧急情况有关的信息的方式。从该项目收集的所有研究成果将通过出版物、教程和开放源码软件向研究界传播。数据收集将可供其他研究人员用于评估他们自己的方法。今天的搜索引擎，或更通用的信息检索(IR)系统，是为一个文档可以满足的简单信息需求而设计的。根据文档与查询的相关性分数独立地对文档进行排名。一个文档应该涵盖所有的查询概念。不幸的是，这一假设对连接不同的相关信息几乎没有帮助，而相关信息对应急管理至关重要。该项目的主要创新之处在于能够搜索文档元组，即共同满足信息需求的一组文档。定义文档元组相对于信息需求集体相关性的基于元组的检索模型和结果组织将帮助用户有效地检查搜索结果。对于复杂的信息需求，文档元组是一种更自然和更理想的检索单位，它被纳入用于应急管理的IR检索模型，跨越了面向单一文档的IR实践，是此类努力的第一次。欲了解更多信息，请访问项目网站：http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~hfang/infochain.html

When disasters strike, an urgent task for decision makers and the general public is to consolidate scattered, probably chaotic and incomplete information and then to plan the next step. The information needed to reach a decision or develop a policy is very likely not provided by a single document or a single piece of text, but resides in multiple sources. In other words, a document might be complemented or further elaborated upon by other documents, and all of them, only as a whole, provide a complete and satisfying answer. This project will create a new information chain of support for emergency management. InfoChain is expected to significantly improve the way policy/decision makers, disaster researchers and the general public search emergency-related information by automatically connecting the dots in information. All research results gleaned from this project will be disseminated to the research community through publications, tutorials and open-source software. Data collections will be available for other researchers to use in evaluating their own approaches. Today's search engines, or more general Information Retrieval (IR) systems are designed for simple information needs that can be satisfied by one document. Documents are ranked independently with regard to their relevance scores to a query. A single document is expected to cover all the query concepts. Unfortunately, this assumption offers little help for connecting different pieces of relevant information, which is crucial to emergency management. The key novelty of this project is the capability to search document tuples, a group of documents that collectively satisfy an information need. Tuple-based retrieval models and result organization that define collective relevance of a document tuple with respect to an information need will help users efficiently examine search results. The document tuple is a more natural and desirable retrieval unit for complicated information needs, and its incorporation into IR retrieval models for emergency management leaps over the single-document-oriented IR practices and is the first such effort. For further information see the project web site at: http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~hfang/infochain.html