{"id":1086,"date":"2026-07-15T12:58:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T11:58:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/?page_id=1086"},"modified":"2026-07-15T12:58:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T11:58:49","slug":"placename-disambiguation-with-co-occurrence-models","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/placename-disambiguation-with-co-occurrence-models\/","title":{"rendered":"Placename Disambiguation with Co-occurrence Models"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-8f761849 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/stadium.open.ac.uk\/stadia\/stadia\/speakerimages\/743.jpg\" alt=\" Simon Overell\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Simon Overell &#8211; Imperial College London, and KMi, The Open University<br><small>This event took place on Wednesday 06 December 2006 at 11:30<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My talk will cover an introduction to Geographic Information Retrieval (GIR) and the advantages provided by indexing placenames as unambiguous locations. I will describe our GIR system which generates a large-scale co-occurrence model and applies this model to the problem of placename disambiguation. The data for the model is mined from Wikipedia and applied to the GeoCLEF corpus. An example of placename disambiguation could be when &#8220;London&#8221; is referred to in text, is it &#8220;London, UK&#8221; or &#8220;London, Ontario&#8221;? The motivation behind this problem is to make un-annotated data machine readable and allow users to query and browse data geographically. The talk will begin with a description of GIR, placename disambiguation techniques and the use of Wikipedia as a corpus. Then a description of my probabilistic models, using first and higher orders of co-occurrence. The talk will conclude with our findings on how Information Retrieval methods can be enhanced with Geographic<br>Knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stadium.open.ac.uk\/stadia\/preview.php?s=29&amp;whichevent=923\">Watch the webcast replay &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/past-seminars\/\">View all past events<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-8f761849 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full has-custom-css wp-custom-css-ac9b5317\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"213\" height=\"246\" src=\"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/07\/image-2.png\" alt=\"Maven of the Month\" class=\"wp-image-537\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-vertical is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-4fc3f8e1 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/maven-of-the-month\/\">Maven of the Month<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We are also inviting top experts in AI and Knowledge Technologies to discuss major socio-technological topics with an audience that comprises both members of the Knowledge Media Institute, as well as the wider staff at The Open University. Differently from our seminar series, these events follow a Q&amp;A format.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Simon Overell &#8211; Imperial College London, and KMi, The Open UniversityThis event took place on Wednesday 06 December 2006 at 11:30 My talk will cover an introduction to Geographic Information Retrieval (GIR) and the advantages provided by indexing placenames as unambiguous locations. I will describe our GIR system which generates a large-scale co-occurrence model and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"unity_related_person":[],"unity_sdg":[],"unity_research_theme":[],"unity_strategic_priority":[],"unity_enabler":[],"unity_general_category":[],"unity_stem_unit":[],"unity_related_project":[],"unity_related_archived_project":[],"unity_related_event":[],"class_list":["post-1086","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1087,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1086\/revisions\/1087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"unity_related_person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_related_person?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"unity_sdg","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_sdg?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"unity_research_theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_research_theme?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"unity_strategic_priority","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_strategic_priority?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"unity_enabler","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_enabler?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"unity_general_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_general_category?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"unity_stem_unit","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_stem_unit?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"unity_related_project","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_related_project?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"unity_related_archived_project","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_related_archived_project?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"unity_related_event","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schools.stem.open.ac.uk\/knowledge-media-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/unity_related_event?post=1086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}