Access to distributed environmental databases with ICIx technology

The Internet has become a favoured medium for the presentation and exchange of environmental and chemical data. To search for relevant information, the user either has to know the direct address of the Internet site, or has to use search engines and meta information repositories. In the latter case, the desired resource is described by a number of keywords, or descriptors. However, if too few descriptors are given, the answer set is immensely large. If too many or too specific descriptors are given, valuable information might be sorted out, because it lacks a particular descriptor. The Intelligent Cluster Index (ICIx) technology can remedy this situation. It generates a clustering of documents by their content characteristics. Applied in the described scenario this results in a grouping of Internet resources with comparable content. ICIx offers a similarity search facility based on the clustering. It allows the search for an arbitrary combination of descriptors. If an exact match is required, the result contains only documents matching all descriptors. In the similarity search, documents with comparable content - identified by the similarity clustering - can be included in the result set, even if they do not match all descriptors. Thus ICIx offers a wider range of relevant information in the answer than standard full text search provides.