Semantic blocking for record linkage

Abstract

Record Linkage (RL) is an important component of data cleaning and integration and data processing in general. For years, many efforts have focused on improving the performance of the RL process, either by reducing the number of record comparisons or reducing the number of attribute comparisons, which reduces the computational time, but increases the amount of error. However, the real bottleneck of RL is the post-process, where the results have to be reviewed by experts that decide which pairs or groups of records are real links and which are false hits. In this paper we show that exploiting the semantic relationships (e.g. foreign key), established between one or more data sources, makes it possible to find a new sort of semantic blocking method that improves the number of hits and reduces the amount of review effort.