Locating place names from place descriptions

Abstract

In this paper, we review the current literature on geographic information retrieval based on place names. We focus on the positional uncertainties and the extent of vagueness frequently associated with place names in linguistic place descriptions and on the differences between common users’ perception and the way the geographic information services interpret place names. We argue that, despite some notable efforts from the scientific community, geographic information services still cannot unambiguously recognize and sufficiently perform spatial reasoning with place names used in linguistic expressions. We focus on three interrelated research areas: (1) the use of place names in gazetteers, (2) the use of formal models to reason with spatial relations and with the spatial extent of place names in linguistic place descriptions, and (3) Web-harvesting and crowd-sourcing techniques for identifying place names and their spatial extension from public and volunteer sources, such as social networks and photo-sharing sites. We identify some opportunities for synthesizing existing approaches that would expedite the process of intelligent communication about place names between services and users. We discuss the shortcomings of the current state of affairs in locating place names from place descriptions and identify new areas of importance for future research.