Information Retrieval and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Information Retrieval and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Information Retrieval is an interdisciplinary area which corresponds to the process of finding relevant information units that satisfy an information need from a collection of information sources.  The data is usually text although the increasing use of the web as a data repository has led to the inclusion of multimedia data such as images, videos, and sound where exact matches are replaced by similarity searches. The main component of the retrieval is a search which is facilitated by imposing an index on the underlying data.  The growth of the web and the increasing popularity of smartphones and the embedding of GPS in these devices has led to the increasing importance of location as a component of all types of data and when coupled with this data is known as spatial data.  Database systems that deal with spatial data and its retrieval are known as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and the department has been in the forefront of dealing with this type of data for over 50 years.

Associated Faculty

Photo of Jordan Boyd-Graber

Jordan Boyd-Graber

Associate Professor
Photo of Ramani Duraiswami

Ramani Duraiswami

Professor
Associate Chair for Graduate Education
Photo of Ming Lin

Ming Lin

Professor
Dr. Barry Mersky and Capital One Endowed Professor; Distinguished University Professor
Photo of David Mount

David Mount

Professor
Associate Chair of Undergraduate Education
Photo of Hanan Samet

Hanan Samet

Professor
Distinguished University Professor
Photo of Nicholas Roussopoulos

Nicholas Roussopoulos

Professor Emeritus
Photo of Leila De Floriani

Leila De Floriani

Affiliate Professor
Photo of Vanessa Frias-Martinez

Vanessa Frias-Martinez

Affiliate Associate Professor
Photo of Richard Marciano

Richard Marciano

Affiliate Professor
Photo of Doug Oard

Doug Oard

Affiliate Professor