Natural language processing to query a Geographic Information System (India) knowledgebase

Abstract

In the work presented in this paper, a successful effort is made to answer the user’s English-like simple queries about geography of India and the user is not required to know about the structure of the database at logical level because the software is implemented using Logic Programming constructs and uses, knowledge-base, rather than a database. A user-interface system is developed which can accept queries, keyed-in in natural English language. It can further understand and interpret the meaning of the question asked by the given query. Finally the system can analyze and search the knowledgebase to answer the stated query, by reducing search space using artificial intelligence techniques. If the query is not understood by the system it reports to the users about the words not available in the knowledgebase and also reports the particular relations about the entities not being currently answered. The knowledgebase of about 32 K is stored about the following geographical entities and their inter-relationship that are related and limited to Indian peninsula: