Multidimensional relevance : a new aggregation criterion

In this paper, a new model for aggregating multiple criteria evaluations for relevance assessment is proposed. An information retrieval context is considered, where relevance is modelled as a multidimensional property of documents. In the paper, the proposed aggregation operator is applied to define a model for personalized Information Retrieval (IR), in which four criteria are considered in order to assess 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 with 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. In the paper, some preliminary experimental results are also reported.