Activation on the move: Querying tourism information via spreading activation

Abstract

In this paper, we present an information retrieval system for tourism information that allows query formulation in natural language. We describe a knowledge representation model, based on associative networks, for defining semantic relationships of terms. The relatedness of terms is taken into account and we show how a fuzzy search strategy, performed by a constrained spreading activation algorithm, yields beneficial results and recommends closely related matches to users' queries. Thus, spreading activation implicitly implements query expansion. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.