GEOCODING USING INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

• US 20080301092A1
• Filed: 06/01/2007
• Published: 12/04/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 06/01/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Jayanti, Harish, Shinn, Eugene
• Granted Patent: US 8,626,789 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/29 Geographical information databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/334 Query execution G06F16/335 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3344 using natural language analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9537 Spatial or temporal dependent retrieval, e.g. spatiotemporal queries

Abstract

Geocoding architecture based on information retrieval. The geocoding information retrieval system operates on locations and geographic entities. The architecture uses parameters in addition to the query string, if available. The parameters provide contextual information that enables filtering and sorting the results. The additional parameters include market, culture, map view, and user location. A geocoding triage process uses the query and context information provided and output of a machine-learning parser to select the data-lookup geocoders for processing the query. A results processing component collects the results from the underlying data-lookup geocoders, merges the results into a single list after normalizing the scores, and then re-sorts the results list.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented geocoding system, comprising:

a triage component for receiving a string and parsing the string into a set of data-retrieval requests;

a geocoding component for aggregating data-retrieval requests and federating the data-retrieval requests to geocoders; and

a results component for processing responses from the geocoders into a ranked list of results, which a subset of the results is returned.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the string received by the triage component includes context information.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the context information includes market data, culture data, map view data and user location data.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the string is part of a query of natural language text.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising a query component for receiving the string in a query and adding context information to the string.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the geocoder component federates the requests to the geocoders using a parallel execution component.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the triage component performs a classification process on the string to obtain the parse results.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the classification process is based on machine learning.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the results component generates scores for the results, and the results are ranked based on the scores.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the results component normalizes static data-retrieval requests, and generates dynamic scores for the results based on multiple dimensions of relevance using at least one of context information, data-retrieval possibilities, the static data-retrieval requests, or user personalization.

11. A computer-implemented method of geocoding based on data retrieval, comprising:

receiving a query string accompanied by context information;

parsing the string into parse results;

creating data-retrieval requests based on the parse results;

federating the requests to data geocoders;

merging responses from the geocoders into a ranked list of results; and

selecting a set of results from the ranked list of results and returning the set of results for processing.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the data-retrieval requests are passed to the geocoders in parallel for substantially concurrent execution.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising extracting country and region information from the query and context information for processing by a weighting function to weight the responses to generate the ranked list by country and region.

14. The method of claim 11, wherein the query is a structured string or an unstructured natural language string.

15. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

applying scoring rules to results in the responses to generate scores;

applying weights to the scores;

aggregating the scores into a composites score; and

assigning the composite score to a result that spawned the score.

16. The method of claim 11, further comprising verifying whether an address of the query is valid or invalid.

17. The method of claim 11, further comprising optimizing the query based on country and region.

18. The method of claim 11, further comprising optimizing the request for a specific geocoder.

19. The method of claim 11, further comprising ranking the results based on a static rank and a dynamic rank.

20. A computer-implemented system, comprising:

computer-implemented means for receiving a natural language string of test from a client;

computer-implemented means for parsing the string into parse results;

computer-implemented means for creating data-retrieval requests based on the parse results;

computer-implemented means for federating the requests to data geocoders;

computer-implemented means for merging responses from the geocoders into a ranked list of results; and

computer-implemented means for selecting a set of results from the ranked list of results and returning the set of results to the client.