Search Enhancement with Adaptive Thesaurus and Ontology Resources

Traditional thesauri typically have entries with semantic relationships that are helpful for manual use, but the format of the semantic information is usually not conducive to their incorporation in Web retrieval applications. In addition, the number of thesaurus entries and relationships are limited, compared to the much larger and richer concept space of the scientific domain that a given thesaurus represents. With scientific and technological advances over time, it is desirable to develop automated means of capturing important new concepts and relationships, in order to make thesauri more adaptive and useful for searching. This project will develop technology for converting reference compilations, such as DOE's ETDE/INIS Joint Thesaurus, into a format useful for World Wide Web and Semantic Web search applications. The new Energy Semantic Network (ESN) will be used in conjunction with an advanced meta-search and clustering engine to automatically identify and categorize strongly associated concepts from the energy literature for potential inclusion in the thesaurus. Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee: The Energy Semantic Network not only should improve access to DOE/OSTI databases but also should be applicable to other scientific knowledge sources and retrieval applications.