Geospatial chatbot
Developing a chatbot for accessing complex geospatial information
People:
Professor Hywel Williams, Dr Hailun Xie, Arjun Biswas
Partners:
Ordnance Survey
Technical approaches:
Chatbots, smart agents, LLMs; Agentic AI
Challenge areas:
Earth observation, remote sensing & geospatial intelligence; Technical foundations for effective environmental data use
Project to develop an AI-powered chatbot to facilitate retrieval of specific information from the Ordnance Survey (OS) National Geographic Database, a task that currently requires specialist expertise.
To make this information accessible to non-experts, the project uses "agents" (specialised AI programs) that work together to understand a user's question and find the right data. Introduction of a more autonomous multi-agent system, with each expert agent a specialist in a specific category, such as building or addresses, allows the chatbot to handle natural language questions (plain English) and navigate the database's complexity automatically, providing accurate geographical answers without the user needing technical training.
Find out more about the geospatial chatbot project
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