A safe port for the web sailor
The sheer volume of information attainable through web-search engines makes most searches a troublesome quest of sifting through unimpotant or irrelevent information. When businesses rely on detailed specific information for their livelihood, getting that information in a timely, accurate matter is vital. POR.COM project's objective was to solve this problem. Within this project an innovative business search engine was developed, using state of the art technology for information access and filtering, aimed at matching the customers seeking for products and services with the entities that provide them in the Port of Rotterdam. This was achieved by adapting and implementing a new tool-set based on the Autonomy software. This software is a pattern matching, knowledge management tool that makes use of the 'concepts' embedded in source texts and meta-data attached to images and other non-text sources. In order to implement the suppliers' part of the program, the software had to be trained in the context of port services, and to be attached to a database that contained multimedia information about the products and services available. The customer's part consists of an interface that enables users to make queries in their natural language. After the query, they are guided to links of the companies that match their requirements. This simple and straightforward method for developing a business-to-business portal although used in a port environment, could function equally well in other similar business environments such as regional development authorities.
