DYNAMICALLY LINKING RELEVANT DOCUMENTS TO REGIONS OF INTEREST

• US 20110119265A1
• Filed: 11/16/2009
• Published: 05/19/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 11/16/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Terrago Technologies Incorporated (In-Q-Tel)
• Original Assignee: Terrago Technologies Incorporated (In-Q-Tel)
• Inventors: Knoblock, Craig A., Shahabi, Cyrus, Chen, Ching-Chien, Kapoor, Dipsy
• Granted Patent: US 8,635,228 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/729
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/38 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9537 Spatial or temporal dependent retrieval, e.g. spatiotemporal queries
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/00 Commerce

Abstract

Document relevance is determined with respect to a region of interest (ROI). A set of location references may be associated with a set of documents. The system selects location references associated with an ROI and then selects documents corresponding to the selected location references. The selected documents can be reported or processed further. A document-location reference index can be accessed when the present system is ‘online’ and processing a request for documents relevant to an ROI. The document-location reference index may be generated and updated while the present system is ‘offline’ and not processing a request for documents. The resulting relevant documents may be provided to a user in response to a document search associated with the ROI or along with an advertisement associated with the ROI.

Claims

1. A method for relating documents to a region of interest, the method comprising:

linking a plurality of location references stored in memory to a plurality of documents by a server;

selecting a sub-set of the plurality of location references associated with a region of interest; and

selecting a subset of the plurality of documents associated with the sub-set of location references.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising creating a location reference index which includes a list of words within each location reference.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising querying the location reference index with each word from each document in the set of documents.

4. The method of claim 2, further comprising creating a second index having a record for each document in the set of documents, each document record including a score for each location reference having a word found in the document associated with the record.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the region of interest is received as text input.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the region of interest is received as a selected portion of an image.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the region of interest is a geographical region.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the selected location references have geographical positioning data corresponding to a position within the region of interest.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining a score for each document associated with a location reference within the region of interest.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising:

generating a score for each location reference for each document; and

for each document, aggregating the location reference scores for location references associated with the region of interest.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising filtering the sub-set of the plurality of documents by the aggregated location reference scores.

12. The method of claim 10, further comprising selecting documents to receive an advertisement based on the aggregated location reference scores, the region of interest associated with the advertisement.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising selecting documents to provide to a user based on the aggregated location reference scores, the region of interest associated with the user.

14. The method of claim 10, further comprising selecting documents to provide to a user based on a keyword associated with a user and the aggregated location reference scores, the region of interest associated with the user.

15. A computer readable storage medium having a program embodied thereon, the program executable by processor to perform a method for relating documents to a region of interest, the method comprising:

linking a plurality of location references to a plurality of documents;

selecting a sub-set of the plurality of location references associated with a region of interest; and

selecting a subset of the plurality of documents associated with the sub-set of the plurality of location references.

16. The computer readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein the method further including creating a second index having a record for each document in the plurality of documents, each document record including a score for each location reference having a word found in the document associated with the record.

17. The computer readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein the region of interest is a geographical region.

18. The computer readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein the selected location references have geographical positioning data corresponding to a position within the region of interest.

19. The computer readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein the method further comprises determining a score for each document associated with a location reference within the region of interest.

20. The computer readable storage medium of claim 19, wherein the method further comprises:

generating a score for each location reference for each document; and

for each document, aggregating the location reference scores for location references associated with the region of interest.

21. The computer readable storage medium of claim 19, wherein the method further comprises selecting documents to receive an advertisement based on the aggregated location reference scores, the region of interest associated with the advertisement.

22. The computer readable storage medium of claim 19, wherein the method further comprises selecting documents to provide to a user based on the aggregated location reference scores, the region of interest associated with the user.

23. A system for relating documents to regions of interest, comprising:

a query engine stored in memory and executable by a processor to query an index of linked documents and location references for documents linked to a subset of location references associated with a region of interest; and

a score generator stored in memory and executable by a processor to generate a score for each document, each document score based on the location references linked to the document and associated with the region of interest.