The semantics of place-related questions

W Kuhn, E Hamzei, M Tomko, S Winter, H Li - Journal of Spatial …, 2021 - josis.org
Journal of Spatial Information Science, 2021josis.org
The trend to equip information systems with question-answering capabilities raises the
design problem of deciding which questions a system should be able to answer. Typical
solutions build on mining human conversations or logs from similar systems for question
patterns. For the case of questions about geographic places, we present a complementary
approach, showing how to derive possible questions from an ontology of spatial information
and a classification of place facets. We argue that such an approach reduces the inherent …
Abstract
The trend to equip information systems with question-answering capabilities raises the design problem of deciding which questions a system should be able to answer. Typical solutions build on mining human conversations or logs from similar systems for question patterns. For the case of questions about geographic places, we present a complementary approach, showing how to derive possible questions from an ontology of spatial information and a classification of place facets. We argue that such an approach reduces the inherent and substantial data bias of current solutions. At a more general level, we provide a novel understanding of spatial questions and their role in designing and using spatial information systems.
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