Multidimensional relevance: Prioritized aggregation in a personalized Information Retrieval setting

A new model for aggregating multiple criteria evaluations for relevance assessment is proposed. An Information Retrieval context is considered, where relevance is modeled as a multidimensional property of documents. The usefulness and effectiveness of such a model are demonstrated by means of a case study on personalized Information Retrieval with multi-criteria relevance. The following criteria are considered to estimate document relevance: aboutness, coverage, appropriateness, and reliability.The originality of this approach lies in the aggregation of the considered criteria in a prioritized way, by considering the existence of a prioritization relationship over the criteria. Such a prioritization is modeled by making the weights associated to a criterion dependent upon the satisfaction of the higher-priority criteria. This way, it is possible to take into account the fact that the weight of a less important criterion should be proportional to the satisfaction degree of the more important criterion.Experimental evaluations are also reported.

► The proposed approach considers that relevance may be modeled as a multidimensional property of documents.
► The overall document score is computed by aggregating the evaluation of each dimension.
► A general overview of the approach is presented.
► A case study has been evaluated in a personalized user environment.