Abstract

Title: Interface for Semantic Distance Measures: an Application

Citation: A. Amato, M. Calabrese, V. Di Lecce, V. Piuri, Interface for Semantic Distance Measures: an Application. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement - Special Number - Vecims 2007.

Abstract: Aim of this work is to present a new information retrieval system (I.R.S.) that associates to each analyzed internet site a semantic map derived from the structure of its links. In order to measure in a qualitative way the performance of this I.R.S., it has been endowed with a human-computer interface based on a geomorphologic metaphor. This interface creates a virtual environment in which the distances among documents measured by the I.R.S. are mapped onto user’s perceptible physical distances among the common elements in a terrain (mountains, valleys and plane). This metaphor makes user aware of the distribution of the documents retrieved by the I.R.S. The first experiments show that the proposed system provides a qualitative way of visualizing information, thus making it simpler for the user to determine the quality of retrieval performances.

Keyword: information retrieval systems, web mining, human computer interface, metaphor based interface