@inproceedings{khellaf-etal-2025-spot,
title = "{SPOT}: Bridging Natural Language and Geospatial Search for Investigative Journalism",
author = "Khellaf, Lynn and
Schlicht, Ipek Baris and
Mirass, Tilman and
Bayer, Julia and
Wagner, Tilman and
Bouwmeester, Ruben",
editor = "Mishra, Pushkar and
Muresan, Smaranda and
Yu, Tao",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 3: System Demonstrations)",
month = jul,
year = "2025",
address = "Vienna, Austria",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-demo.8/",
doi = "10.18653/v1/2025.acl-demo.8",
pages = "71--81",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-253-4",
abstract = "OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a vital resource for investigative journalists doing geolocation verification. However, existing tools to query OSM data such as Overpass Turbo require familiarity with complex query languages, creating barriers for non-technical users. We present SPOT, an open source natural language interface that makes OSM{'}s rich, tag-based geographic data more accessible through intuitive scene descriptions. SPOT interprets user inputs as structured representations of geospatial object configurations using fine-tuned Large Language Models (LLMs), with results being displayed in an interactive map interface. While more general geospatial search tasks are conceivable, SPOT is specifically designed for use in investigative journalism, addressing real-world challenges such as hallucinations in model output, inconsistencies in OSM tagging, and the noisy nature of user input. It combines a novel synthetic data pipeline with a semantic bundling system to enable robust, accurate query generation. To our knowledge, SPOT is the first system to achieve reliable natural language access to OSM data at this level of accuracy. By lowering the technical barrier to geolocation verification, SPOT contributes a practical tool to the broader efforts to support fact-checking and combat disinformation."
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<abstract>OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a vital resource for investigative journalists doing geolocation verification. However, existing tools to query OSM data such as Overpass Turbo require familiarity with complex query languages, creating barriers for non-technical users. We present SPOT, an open source natural language interface that makes OSM’s rich, tag-based geographic data more accessible through intuitive scene descriptions. SPOT interprets user inputs as structured representations of geospatial object configurations using fine-tuned Large Language Models (LLMs), with results being displayed in an interactive map interface. While more general geospatial search tasks are conceivable, SPOT is specifically designed for use in investigative journalism, addressing real-world challenges such as hallucinations in model output, inconsistencies in OSM tagging, and the noisy nature of user input. It combines a novel synthetic data pipeline with a semantic bundling system to enable robust, accurate query generation. To our knowledge, SPOT is the first system to achieve reliable natural language access to OSM data at this level of accuracy. By lowering the technical barrier to geolocation verification, SPOT contributes a practical tool to the broader efforts to support fact-checking and combat disinformation.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T SPOT: Bridging Natural Language and Geospatial Search for Investigative Journalism
%A Khellaf, Lynn
%A Schlicht, Ipek Baris
%A Mirass, Tilman
%A Bayer, Julia
%A Wagner, Tilman
%A Bouwmeester, Ruben
%Y Mishra, Pushkar
%Y Muresan, Smaranda
%Y Yu, Tao
%S Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 3: System Demonstrations)
%D 2025
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Vienna, Austria
%@ 979-8-89176-253-4
%F khellaf-etal-2025-spot
%X OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a vital resource for investigative journalists doing geolocation verification. However, existing tools to query OSM data such as Overpass Turbo require familiarity with complex query languages, creating barriers for non-technical users. We present SPOT, an open source natural language interface that makes OSM’s rich, tag-based geographic data more accessible through intuitive scene descriptions. SPOT interprets user inputs as structured representations of geospatial object configurations using fine-tuned Large Language Models (LLMs), with results being displayed in an interactive map interface. While more general geospatial search tasks are conceivable, SPOT is specifically designed for use in investigative journalism, addressing real-world challenges such as hallucinations in model output, inconsistencies in OSM tagging, and the noisy nature of user input. It combines a novel synthetic data pipeline with a semantic bundling system to enable robust, accurate query generation. To our knowledge, SPOT is the first system to achieve reliable natural language access to OSM data at this level of accuracy. By lowering the technical barrier to geolocation verification, SPOT contributes a practical tool to the broader efforts to support fact-checking and combat disinformation.
%R 10.18653/v1/2025.acl-demo.8
%U https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-demo.8/
%U https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2025.acl-demo.8
%P 71-81
Markdown (Informal)
[SPOT: Bridging Natural Language and Geospatial Search for Investigative Journalism](https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-demo.8/) (Khellaf et al., ACL 2025)
ACL