The state-of-the-art information retrieval systems lack the geographical intelligence needed to effectively answer geography-dependent questions. Two importance research objectives with respect to the above mentioned challenges are addressed in this thesis: how to mine and analyse the geographical information implicit in text, and how to use the geographical knowledge obtained in this way to build models for answering geography-dependent user questions. More specifically, we seek answers to the following (1) how can place names, geographical adjectives and the names of people be used to...