Universität Wien

290705 VU Geographic Information Retrieval (2025W)

5.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 29 - Geographie
Continuous assessment of course work

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 30 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

There is also a class on 22.01.2026.

  • Thursday 09.10. 12:30 - 14:30 GIS-Labor Geo NIG 1.OG
  • Thursday 16.10. 12:30 - 14:30 GIS-Labor Geo NIG 1.OG
  • Thursday 23.10. 12:30 - 14:30 GIS-Labor Geo NIG 1.OG
  • Thursday 30.10. 12:30 - 14:30 GIS-Labor Geo NIG 1.OG
  • Thursday 13.11. 12:30 - 14:30 GIS-Labor Geo NIG 1.OG
  • Thursday 20.11. 12:30 - 14:30 GIS-Labor Geo NIG 1.OG
  • Thursday 27.11. 12:30 - 14:30 GIS-Labor Geo NIG 1.OG
  • Thursday 11.12. 12:30 - 14:30 GIS-Labor Geo NIG 1.OG
  • Thursday 18.12. 12:30 - 14:30 GIS-Labor Geo NIG 1.OG
  • Thursday 15.01. 12:30 - 14:30 GIS-Labor Geo NIG 1.OG
  • Thursday 22.01. 12:30 - 14:30 GIS-Labor Geo NIG 1.OG

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

The size, modality, and source of information about places and regions across the world are constantly changing. To support downstream tasks like question answering, geographic information retrieval (GIR) provides us with an approach of accessing, searching, indexing, and integrating geographic information. Applications related to GIR include the construction of gazetteers, Web search, and location-based recommendation.

The course will cover GIR’s core concepts, techniques and challenges, such as place name ambiguity, georeferencing, indexing and ranking, and natural language processing. Through literature review and Python-based practical exercises, students will learn how to query structured data from geographic databases, how to geoparse and geocode unstructured texts, and how to achieve semantic analysis with retrieved information.

Course content from the past year is available at: https://meilinshi.github.io/290061-Geographic-Information-Retrieval/intro.html

Assessment and permitted materials

Participation (10%)
4 quizzes (40%)
1 midterm exam (20%)
1 final exam (30%)

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Personal contribution that demonstrates an appropriate understanding of the approaches and methods discussed.

100 % - 88 % = 1
87 % - 75 % = 2
74 % - 63 % = 3
62 % - 51 % = 4
Below 51 % = 5

Examination topics

Core concepts, techniques, challenges, and programming skills in geographic information retrieval

Reading list

1. Purves, R. S., Clough, P., Jones, C. B., Hall, M. H., & Murdock, V. (2018). Geographic information retrieval: Progress and challenges in spatial search of text. Foundations and Trends® in Information Retrieval, 12(2-3), 164-318.
2. Presentation and slides (including references)

Association in the course directory

(MSDS-S) (MSDS-IS) (MK1-W1) (MK2)

Last modified: Tu 07.10.2025 10:27