Research

The user revolution has elevated the expectations from both users and businesses on IT effectiveness in general and information access in particular. Focus has shifted from content to users, from publishing to consumption and from control to empowerment. Our vision is: Empowering People and Business for the Information Age. This vision is based on the fact that search is becoming the key technology for building successful online businesses. Search allows businesses to exploit intent analysis in the creation of unique user experiences. Furthermore, search can effectively monetize the traffic generated by such online services. Similarly, search has proven to enable substantial productivity improvements for the information worker. In summary, iAD has therefore been designed to drive the following trends from a technology perspective:

• Search will be everywhere. Search will be available in virtually every application and interface, allowing people to quickly find who and what they need.
• Search will enable unique user experiences. Search will enable rich, new user experiences by creating a conversation based on context—an understanding of who the user is, what information is available, and what business process is involved.
• Search will change the way people do business. Search will create net new revenue streams, improve business decisions, and increase business productivity.

At the core, search is all about matching knowledge about the user (intent) with knowledge about content to produce unique user experiences. Next generation search is built on three pillars:

• Interaction Management: How to build algorithmic and intent-driven portals
• Contextual Matching: How to deliver unprecedented relevance and expressiveness
• Content Analytics: How to capture and enhance information across diverse content sources

Towards performing research in this field, iAD is organized in the following subprojects:

1. Schema agnostic indexing services (NTNU): Create schema agnostic indexing services fusing structured, unstructured and multimedia content in precision, analytics and scale optimised information access services
2. Processing high-speed data streams (Cornell): Develop scalable and fault-tolerant system architectures including data processing and mining platforms for capturing, cleaning, and extracting knowledge from high-speed data streams
3. Scalable infrastructure for push and pull based computing (UiT)/(UiO): Develop and validate in real environments next generation infrastructure for distributed information access
4. Extreme precision and recommendation in multimedia access (DCU): Develop extreme precision solutions for access to multimedia
5. Understanding and managing the disruptive potential of iAD (BI): Identify disruptive processes either within information access or enabled by information access solutions that can be used as a cluster foundation for Norwegian IT innovation

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