A spatial dimension for searching the world wide web

摘要

Few studies have explored spatial relations as they constrain the searching of documents in the World Wide Web (WWW). This paper presents the theoretical basis for a spatial searching of Web documents. It reviews spatial reasoning concepts associated with spatial relations and describes a model for organizing and deriving spatial relations based on a hierarchical structure of the space, that is, a conceptual model of the space in terms of connected regions. Using a study case, this work presents guidelines for how this model can be used for extending current searching techniques of Web documents to answer queries that are constrained by spatial relations.