Using visual spatial search interface for WWW applications

Most Internet search engines are keyword-based. They are not efficient for the queries where geographical location is important, such as finding hotel s within an area or close to a place of interest. A natural interface for s patial searching is a map, which can be used not only to display locations of search results but also to assist forming search conditions. A map-based search engine requires a well-designed visual interface that is intuitive to use yet flexible and expressive enough to support various types of spati al queries as well as aspatial queries. Similar to hyperlinks for text and images in an HTML page, spatial objects in a map should support hyperlinks. Such an interface needs to be scalable with the size of the geographical r egions and the number of websites it covers. In spite of handling typically a very large amount of spatial data, a map-based search interface should m eet the expectation of fast response time for interactive applications. In this paper we discuss general requirements and the design for a new map-bas ed web search interface, focusing on integration with the WWW and visual sp atial query interface. A number of current and future research issues are d iscussed, and a prototype for the University of Queensland is presented. (C ) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.