Intelligent Support to the Retrieval of Information About Hydric Resources

This paper presents the adaptive search features offered by ACQUA, a Web-based system presenting information about the hydric resources of the Piedmont Italian Region. ACQUA enables the user to retrieve qualitative and quantitative data in different formats, supporting direct data manipulation. Moreover, the system supports the user in the search for information by complementing her explicit search queries with follow-up queries frequently occurring together in navigation paths. In this way, the user may retrieve complete information in an efficient way. The paper describes the results of an evaluation of the adaptivity features carried out with real users.