Abstract - Interactive GIS and Document Retrieval Systems: The Unstructured G(IS) Databases of Tomorrow

Track: Information Access and the Internet

Tim O'Brien
Clint Sherrill & Associates
730 San Mateo Blvd SEp
Albuquerque, NM 87108-3604

Telephone: 505-256-7364
Fax: 505-256-7600
E-mail: sherrill@flash.net

Dante Fernandez, Guy Theriot

Interactive GIS and Document Retrieval Systems: The Unstructured G(IS) Databases of Tomorrow

Our society revolves around legal hard-copy documents for everything from land ownership to E-911 tracking reports. The computer era has helped us become less dependent on paper products by developing special programs that track different types of information. The database design process of digital information has forced users to consider future uses for their information in applications that are to be shared with others. Being creative in how we track and structure these databases will enable us to retrieve information quickly at a later date. With digital scanning technology, users can convert paper documents into digital form and then hot link or retrieve these documents using key search words. Although this way of thinking is not new, the resources necessary to populate GIS attributes can be extensive. The planning of how information is gathered and stored in a database is usually a key factor in the success of a GIS or IS program. The IS databases of tomorrow will require a GIS user to populate only very basic information about a point, line, polygon, or event. The onset of new GIS and document retrieval programs are lowering the level of effort and cost needed to find and retrieve OCR scanned documents. This will link the past hard-copy paper age with todays digital world of information with remarkable speed and accuracy. End users will now swim in a world of unstructured digital information.This paper will illustrate how advanced technologies, along with an innovative turnkey project methodology, can be applied as a practical solution for GIS users who need to search and retrieve large amounts of scanned or electronic text documents. Utilizing APIs, DDEs and Excalibur Technologies' EFS product, users of ArcView Version 3.0 and MapObjects can perform "fuzzy" searches to retrieve documents from a wide variety of sources. Document retrieval from ArcView GUI environment is performed by transparently submitting a query composed of GIS database attributes against a neural network-based binary pattern index.