Information retrieval technique on spatial-temporal database of Malaysian biodiversity

Abstract

Information retrieval (IR) is a dynamic area of research, which forms the basis for many of today's applications on the Internet. Since last decades, IR has draw the attention of both researchers and commercial companies and has been fueled by theoretical results, methods, experiments, and implementations. The contributions published so far form a formidable knowledge base, even though the subject is rather young. However, many problems are still open and worthy of further research. It is generally agreed upon that the major task in IR is to find relevant information for a given query [1]. IR applications require speed, consistency, accuracy and ease of use in retrieving relevant texts to satisfy user queries. In biodiversity information system (BIS) side, numbers of research and implementation of IR to biodiversity environment is still at raw stage. Biodiversity databases have recently become widely available to the public and to other researchers. To retrieve information from these resources, users must understand the underlying data schemas even though they often are not content experts. Many other domains share this problem. Biodiversity database can contains spatial, temporal and taxonomy element will yield useful information when it combined. IR is essential part of information system when user tries to extract these three major elements from biodiversity database. Various researches have been conducted to determine what IR models or technique that can extract information from these elements. This research will try to study, produce, determine, and produce a new IR model or technique to support all the elements that essential in biodiversity informatics. 1.0 Introduction Biodiversity is the variation of taxonomic life forms within a given ecosystem, biome or for the entire Earth and a term that defined as 'variation of life at all levels of biological organization' [2]. Malaysia is one of 12 countries over 200 countries that considered as mega-diversity country. There are over thousands or maybe million of known species in Malaysia and this vast amount of data need to be stored. The economic importance and uses of the large number of biodiversity data of Malaysia make it essential for their biodiversity to be monitored and conserved. Biodiversity data is an assortment of different types of taxonomy or manifest itself on the genetic species, environment, landscape levels, manipulated to analyze the past, define the present and the consider possibilities of the future.