A context-aware enterprise search engine for aviation

Abstract

Compared to conventional internet search engines, the complexity of enterprise information space raises a number of challenges to enterprise search engines in the nature of unstructured search contents, task-relevance, dynamic result presentation, and multiple languages. We show how we tackle the above challenges through the development of an aviation-oriented enterprise search engine for English-Chinese bilingual MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul) task cards, called TaskCar-dFinder. TaskCardFinder enables MRO service planners and technicians to quickly find out a list of bilingual MRO task cards which are relevant to a specific service order/request coming from airlines. The TaskCardFinder demonstrates several novel context-aware features specifically designed for aviation industry, including: topic-specific search assistance, relevant keywords suggestion, context-aware preferences support, recall-based search by time according to user's search history and/or task card viewing history, and MRO-service-relevant task cards recommendation. In addition to that, TaskCardFinder is also a bilingual (Chinese and English) search engine. It allows users to use either Chinese or English or the combination of both to search relevant technical data in both English and Chinese. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.