Methodologies for Designing and Evaluating Information Retrieval Experiments. Australian researchers have been highly successful in the area of information searching for more than two decades. This project will reinforce that position. By developing better measures of how retrieval systems such as web search engines perform, we will be able to advise the providers of such services on how to structure software so as to maximize the utility gained by their customers. Targeted access to the right ....Methodologies for Designing and Evaluating Information Retrieval Experiments. Australian researchers have been highly successful in the area of information searching for more than two decades. This project will reinforce that position. By developing better measures of how retrieval systems such as web search engines perform, we will be able to advise the providers of such services on how to structure software so as to maximize the utility gained by their customers. Targeted access to the right information is a goal of all organizations, regardless of their type, and improved methodologies for conducting information retrieval experiments will have widespread and tangible benefits. The techniques developed will also be applicable in fields such as document categorization, text summarization, and machine learning.Read moreRead less
Static and Dynamic Query Pruning Techniques for Complex Text Retrieval Systems. Targeted access to the right information is a goal of all organizations, regardless of their type, and improved methodologies for implementing information retrieval systems have widespread and tangible benefits. Australian researchers have been highly successful in this area of information searching for more than two decades, and this project will reinforce that position. By developing techniques for providing fast ....Static and Dynamic Query Pruning Techniques for Complex Text Retrieval Systems. Targeted access to the right information is a goal of all organizations, regardless of their type, and improved methodologies for implementing information retrieval systems have widespread and tangible benefits. Australian researchers have been highly successful in this area of information searching for more than two decades, and this project will reinforce that position. By developing techniques for providing faster search, even in the presence of complex query variants and distributed implementations, we will be able to advise the suppliers of such services on how to provide a maximally useful product.
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Effective Information Retrieval for Partitioned Document Collections. Current information retrieval services make use of massive indexes in order to resolve content-based queries. Monolithic approaches like this have been effective until now because the volume of data stored has been manageable on a single machine or tightly-coupled cluster of machines, and because the data has been available for collection. But with an increasing amount of automatically generated data, and an increasing diversi ....Effective Information Retrieval for Partitioned Document Collections. Current information retrieval services make use of massive indexes in order to resolve content-based queries. Monolithic approaches like this have been effective until now because the volume of data stored has been manageable on a single machine or tightly-coupled cluster of machines, and because the data has been available for collection. But with an increasing amount of automatically generated data, and an increasing diversity of information sources, other approaches are required. In this project we will investigate mechanisms for handling retrieval tasks when the indexes to the data are stored locally with the data, and when no central index is viable.Read moreRead less
Real-time rights-based recordkeeping governance. This interdisciplinary research project aims to explore how records co-creation can be conceptualised in child protection and information law and overseen dynamically through a new digitally enabled, child-centred and rights-based advocacy and regulatory framework, to play an integral role in ensuring that the systems to protect children from abuse and neglect do not themselves cause harm. This project seeks to develop participatory information go ....Real-time rights-based recordkeeping governance. This interdisciplinary research project aims to explore how records co-creation can be conceptualised in child protection and information law and overseen dynamically through a new digitally enabled, child-centred and rights-based advocacy and regulatory framework, to play an integral role in ensuring that the systems to protect children from abuse and neglect do not themselves cause harm. This project seeks to develop participatory information governance as a new theoretical foundation for proactive recordkeeping and rights advocacy for childhood out-of-home Care. Improved transparency, accountability, efficiency and access to justice are anticipated benefits from this legal, recordkeeping and information infrastructure design research.Read moreRead less
Improving Interactions for Digital Browsing of Large Collections. Browsing for information is an established and fundamental part of how people find the knowledge that they need. However, our current understanding of how browsing succeeds or fails is poor. This is because we have limited empirical data, and until recently, the available technologies to create detailed data on what people actually look at and when were very limited. As a result, digital browsing methods have been almost universal ....Improving Interactions for Digital Browsing of Large Collections. Browsing for information is an established and fundamental part of how people find the knowledge that they need. However, our current understanding of how browsing succeeds or fails is poor. This is because we have limited empirical data, and until recently, the available technologies to create detailed data on what people actually look at and when were very limited. As a result, digital browsing methods have been almost universally inferior to real-world counterparts. Given the lack of fundamental theories to inform design, this is unsurprising. After creating a detailed and systematic account of user behaviour in browsing, we will create novel designs that will accelerate the discovery of information, particularly for innovative work.Read moreRead less
Finding answers for complex questions. This project aims to develop a new search paradigm for on-line search engines that presents users with answers to complex questions, rather than forcing them to find answers themselves from lists of retrieved documents. The project will develop a taxonomy of complex answer search tasks, devise novel techniques to increase the effectiveness of complex answer retrieval through interaction and, create a new evaluation framework for precise measurement of syste ....Finding answers for complex questions. This project aims to develop a new search paradigm for on-line search engines that presents users with answers to complex questions, rather than forcing them to find answers themselves from lists of retrieved documents. The project will develop a taxonomy of complex answer search tasks, devise novel techniques to increase the effectiveness of complex answer retrieval through interaction and, create a new evaluation framework for precise measurement of system effectiveness. This project should provide significant advances that will benefit all users of search engines.Read moreRead less
Rights in records by design. This project aims to design and develop a Lifelong Living Archive for children who experience out-of-home care Children cared for out-of-home need quality recordkeeping systems to develop and nurture their sense of identity and connectedness; account for their care experiences throughout their lives; and detect, report, investigate and take action against child neglect and abuse. This research is expected to support children experiencing family dislocation through ef ....Rights in records by design. This project aims to design and develop a Lifelong Living Archive for children who experience out-of-home care Children cared for out-of-home need quality recordkeeping systems to develop and nurture their sense of identity and connectedness; account for their care experiences throughout their lives; and detect, report, investigate and take action against child neglect and abuse. This research is expected to support children experiencing family dislocation through efficient, effective, and responsive recordkeeping systems to ensure the highest standards and continuity of care.Read moreRead less
Indexes Allowing Fast and Efficient Text Search. Since the arrival of search engines such as Google, it has become an expectation that we can find a few words in a very large amount of text very quickly. This is also true of biologists, who expect to be able to submit protein sequences for matching against a massive database and retrieve and answer in seconds. If successful, this project will invent fundamental software that will allow the discovery of words in text much more quickly, and using ....Indexes Allowing Fast and Efficient Text Search. Since the arrival of search engines such as Google, it has become an expectation that we can find a few words in a very large amount of text very quickly. This is also true of biologists, who expect to be able to submit protein sequences for matching against a massive database and retrieve and answer in seconds. If successful, this project will invent fundamental software that will allow the discovery of words in text much more quickly, and using less computing resources than current methods. The benefits of this technology to the searching public, scientists, and industry will be immediate as productivity will be improved and costs reduced.Read moreRead less
Sub-collection retrieval: understanding and improving search engines. Search engines have become essential in many parts of daily life. This project aims to improve the accuracy of search engines, increasing the productivity of information seeking tasks and reducing frustration with poor search answers, thus improving the current gateway to the world of information.
Effective summaries for search results. All information retrieval systems return a search result page that lists short summaries of each retrieved document. This project will transform search effectiveness by taking a new approach to the understanding, design, and construction of such summaries. Recent work has showed that users fail to click on up to 50 per cent of relevant documents because of poor summary quality. To enhance search result summaries, this project will model how users determine ....Effective summaries for search results. All information retrieval systems return a search result page that lists short summaries of each retrieved document. This project will transform search effectiveness by taking a new approach to the understanding, design, and construction of such summaries. Recent work has showed that users fail to click on up to 50 per cent of relevant documents because of poor summary quality. To enhance search result summaries, this project will model how users determine document relevance when inspecting a summary; it will exploit a previously untapped source of information to dramatically improve summary quality; and, it will create a new approach to retrieving relevant documents by considering their summarisability.Read moreRead less