Finding map regions with high density of query keywords

We consider the problem of finding map regions that best match query keywords. This region search problem can be applied in many practical scenarios such as shopping recommendation, searching for tourist attractions, and collision region detection for wireless sensor networks. While conventional map search retrieves isolate locations in a map, users frequently attempt to find regions of interest instead, e.g., detecting regions having too many wireless sensors to avoid collision, or finding shopping areas featuring various merchandise or tourist attractions of different styles. Finding regions of interest in a map is a non-trivial problem and retrieving regions of arbitrary shapes poses particular challenges. In this paper, we present a novel region search algorithm, dense region search (DRS), and its extensions, to find regions of interest by estimating the density of locations containing the query keywords in the region. Experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm.