Neighborhood systems and approximate retrieval

An approximate retrieval model is proposed based on the notion of neighborhood systems. The knowledge used in the model consists of an information table, in which each object is represented by its values on a finite set of attributes, and neighborhood systems on attribute values, which provide semantic similarity or closeness of different values. An information table can be used for exact retrieval. With the introduction of neighborhood systems to information tables, one is able to perform approximate retrieval. Operations on neighborhood systems are introduced based on power algebras. An ordering relation representing the information of a neighborhood system is suggested and examined. Approximate retrieval is carried out by the relaxation of the original query using neighborhood systems, and the combination of intermediate results using neighborhood system operations. The final retrieval results are presented according to the proposed ordering relation. In contrast to many existing systems, a main advantage of the proposed model is that the retrieval results are a non-linear ordering of objects.