IDENTIFYING LOCATION NAMES WITHIN DOCUMENT TEXT

• US 20110264664A1
• Filed: 04/22/2010
• Published: 10/27/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 04/22/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Yang, Jiangming, Chen, Xingrong, Xiao, Rong, Zhang, Lei
• Granted Patent: US 8,676,807 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/741
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/31 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures

Abstract

Concepts and technologies are described herein for identifying location names within document text. Through an implementation of the concepts and technologies presented herein, functionality can be provided for identifying location names within articles, websites, travelogues, or other such documents. For instance, documents containing the names of cities, regions, countries, landmarks, or other locations may be associated with those locations. The location names may be unambiguously identified even when the location names may also have common word meanings that are not location associated or when the location name may be associated with more than one location.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for location name identification within document text, the computer-implemented method comprising performing computer-implemented operations for:

receiving a document;

detecting location names in the document;

recognizing location senses of the identified location names;

performing the detection of location names and the recognition of location senses iteratively; and

generating a search index by propagating relevance scores from the detection of location names and the recognition of location senses.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the detection of location names and the recognition of location senses is initialized using statistics derived from a corpus of documents.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising establishing a location sense hierarchy for the document.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 3, wherein the location sense hierarchy comprises a location sense tree.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 4, wherein the location sense tree includes observed location senses and hidden location senses.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the search index associates the relevance of location senses to the document.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising applying heuristic clues to the detection of location names and the recognition of location senses.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the detection of location names comprises disambiguation location names from common words.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the recognition of location senses comprises disambiguation multiple location senses associated with a location name.

10. A computer-readable storage medium having computer-readable instructions stored thereupon which, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to:

receive a document;

detect location names in the document;

recognize location senses of the identified location names; and

perform the detection of location names and the recognition of location senses iteratively.

11. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the computer is further caused to generate a search index by propagating relevance scores from the detection of location names and the recognition of location senses.

12. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the detection of location names and the recognition of location senses is initialized using statistics derived from a corpus of documents.

13. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the computer is further caused to establish a location sense hierarchy for the document.

14. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 13, wherein the location sense hierarchy comprises a location sense tree.

15. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 14, wherein the location sense tree includes observed location senses and hidden location senses.

16. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the computer is further caused to apply heuristic clues to the detection of location names and the recognition of location senses.

17. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the detection of location names comprises disambiguation location names from common words.

18. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the recognition of location senses comprises disambiguation multiple location senses associated with a location name.

19. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein the search index associates the relevance of location senses to the document

20. A computer-implemented method for location name identification within document text, the computer-implemented method comprising performing computer-implemented operations for:

receiving a corpus;

receiving a document;

detecting location names, as identified from the corpus, in the document;

recognizing location senses, as identified from the corpus, of the identified location names;

performing the detection of location names and the recognition of location senses iteratively; and

generating a search index by propagating relevance scores from the detection of location names and the recognition of location senses.