A Data-Driven Text Mining and Semantic Network Analysis for Design Information Retrieval

TLDR

In the big‑data era, massive electronic information on the internet offers valuable resources for engineering design knowledge discovery, yet traditional document‑based retrieval cannot uncover associations between concepts, and although ontology‑based techniques can extract such relationships, few public ontologies are tailored to design and engineering perspectives. The study develops a design‑focused WordNet by integrating text‑mining approaches to construct an unsupervised learning ontology network. Probability and velocity network analyses with varied statistical behaviors are then applied to evaluate concept correlation degrees for design information retrieval. Validation shows that probability and velocity analysis on the constructed ontology network can identify high‑related complex design and engineering associations, and a case study demonstrates its use in a real‑world project for design relations retrieval.

Abstract

With the advent of the big-data era, massive information stored in electronic and digital forms on the internet become valuable resources for knowledge discovery in engineering design. Traditional document retrieval method based on document indexing focuses on retrieving individual documents related to the query, but is incapable of discovering the various associations between individual knowledge concepts. Ontology-based technologies, which can extract the inherent relationships between concepts by using advanced text mining tools, can be applied to improve design information retrieval in the large-scale unstructured textual data environment. However, few of the public available ontology database stands on a design and engineering perspective to establish the relations between knowledge concepts. This paper develops a “WordNet” focusing on design and engineering associations by integrating the text mining approaches to construct an unsupervised learning ontology network. Subsequent probability and velocity network analysis are applied with different statistical behaviors to evaluate the correlation degree between concepts for design information retrieval. The validation results show that the probability and velocity analysis on our constructed ontology network can help recognize the high related complex design and engineering associations between elements. Finally, an engineering design case study demonstrates the use of our constructed semantic network in real-world project for design relations retrieval.