Helping professionals make good use of the internet

Searching for data using Internet search engines allows identification and collection of single items of data without difficulty. However, a multi-facet, multi-source search for professional (and perhaps business) purposes is difficult to co-ordinate and often frustrated by either too many possible sources or too few. In many ways this is a problem similar to data/records kept in an old-fashioned filing system, finding a single item with a particular attribute is quite straightforward but identifying groups with a variety of pre-specified characteristics often proves more difficult or impossible. This paper reports work which has been done to provide services/web-site that collects and stores information and the search systems that are being developed using the Concept search philosophy. The paper also describes and demonstrates the integration and application of an intelligent Concept search into the Construction and Real Estate Information Service system so that the amount and quality of data is of actual practical use to construction professionals searching for reliable information which is relevant to their work but which is needed within a short period of time.