=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1383/paper17
|storemode=property
|title=Semantic Technology for Oil & Gas Business
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1383/paper17.pdf
|volume=Vol-1383
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/semweb/LavariniM14
}}
==Semantic Technology for Oil & Gas Business==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1383/paper17.pdf
Semantic Technology for Oil & Gas Businesses
Nico Lavarini
Expert System SpA, Rovereto – Trento, Italy
nlavarini@expertsystem.com
Abstract. Global events can trigger new challenges and changes in strategy in
the blink of an eye. Knowledge intensive industries require early and accurate
notification of global market changes as well as solid information collection
strategies which are vital to good decision making.
For these purposes, the adoption of semantic technology will make companies
aware of changes (ongoing and prospective) ahead of time: a key factor in stay-
ing competitive and up to date.
The Cogito Semantic Intelligence Platform uses semantic technology to reach
unprecedented levels of depth and quality in intelligence analysis. The software
drastically reduces the amount of manual analyst labor while providing imme-
diate and complete information to aid multi-national Oil & Gas Companies in
the decision-making process.
Keywords: Semantics, semantic technology, Oil & Gas, search, discovery, ex-
traction, classification, analytics, unstructured information, knowledge man-
agement, competitive intelligence, decision making process
1 The scenario and its challenges
International Oil & Gas companies are committed to finding, producing, transport-
ing, transforming and marketing oil and gas.
Within these companies, there are corporate functions devoted to Integrated Initia-
tives Promotion, where “integration” implies the achievement of core business results
across several stages of the hydrocarbon value chain (upstream and downstream).
Creating value in today’s globalized business encompasses a tight and continuous
effort in understanding and anticipating what’s to come environmentally, economical-
ly, politically or otherwise. As such, technological innovation is crucial to stay afloat
in the energy and fuel market.
The risk for any international player is having an intelligence process that is slower
than the speed of destructive marketplace events or having an “after the fact” ap-
proach in the process of tackling risks and opportunities in business and technology
environment, with little or no room for maneuvering.
adfa, p. 1, 2011.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011
2 The solution
The adoption of semantic technology has enabled knowledge workers to select and
connect pieces of knowledge critical to maintaining stability in a tumultuous industry.
Field experience shows that knowledge is more about the connections among con-
cepts within a text rather than just a mere collection of keywords or documents. A
semantic engine is the only tool that can improve productivity and effectiveness in
making such connections.
Cogito™ semantic software is that engine. Oil & Gas knowledge workers can em-
ploy such a semantic search engine to
x Capture the weak signals and nuanced technological advancements buried in textu-
al documents;
x Distill key information, for example using SAO (Subject, Action, Object) structure
identification, to boost technical problem solving so informed decisions can be
made;
x Select, store and track the signals of knowledge from the huge overflow of current
information until they become large enough to be classified as an opportunity or
threat.
2.1 Key benefits
The benefits of adopting advanced semantic search tools range from the effective-
ness of searching – providing targeted responses and extracting “meaning” from text
documents – to the more complete organization of the company’s information assets.
It also ensures security and compliance, fosters knowledge sharing and cooperation
among all users, and gives tangible support for business processes that are developed
in the pursuit of the strategic mission.
x Reduced time and costs for information management using data mining, semantic
search, content navigation and automatic categorization
x Monitoring of markets and competitors for competitive advantage
x Advanced collaboration platform for knowledge workers and analysts to share
intellectual capital
The Cogito engine allows operators to manage information by capturing the weak
signals in content, storing and tracking knowledge in an R&D environment, and dis-
tilling key analytical data.
3 Case studies
Scientific breakthrough: A government spokesman announces in the early morn-
ing that a scientist from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was able to produce hydrogen using
bacteria. With the markets in London set to open in three hours, African press agen-
cies start to push out news of the discovery.
Meanwhile, a knowledge worker at the headquarters of the Oil & Gas Group is just
turning on his PC and opening the Cogito application from Expert System.
On the map, the knowledge worker notices a red light indicating a breakthrough in
the African region. The worker begins analyzing information related to the discovery
and is quickly able to notify his superiors of the implications for the Company —
which are monumental — since they are looking for new and innovative ways to pro-
duce hydrogen.
Political and geographical awareness: Regional Authorities in the Gansu region
of China are discussing the possibility of a new National Park area which would cover
a significant part of the region. This information is still largely unknown to main press
agencies, as it is still a just a simple proposal.
A Company has plans for an important gas plant in the area, and thus, is seeking
political collaboration from local authorities. The information mentioned above could
drive the Company strategy away from the area, or at least change the mid-term strat-
egy. Knowing this type of information ahead of time could give the Company a lead
on its competitors in the race for worldwide business.
Knowledge on territory: A Group spans almost a hundred countries, with tens of
thousands employees. The amount of available documentation is huge, and sorting
millions of documents for relevant information is a complex matter.
The Cogito platform performs semantic categorization and content identification,
so that large unstructured document bases can be managed in a structured way, and
thus extracts relevant documents in just seconds. For example, an operator using Co-
gito can effectively distill the large document base and extract only the documents
‘relevant to the Gansu region which discuss Hydraulic Fracturing strategies which
include the collaboration of sub-contractor EOG Resources’, without even knowing
the exact keywords and terms used in the various sources contained in the document
base.
Corporate Knowledge Management: A Group manages several million technical
documents containing deep technical content related to the Oil & Gas domain. The
geographical aspects of documents (locations of plants, basins, oil fields, all proprie-
tary and generic locations) are of extreme importance. The entire database of docu-
ments is easily processed by the Cogito platform, which contains a rich customized
semantic network of millions of geographical entities and their locations, including
their relationships to other locations and resources.
The processed documents are then enhanced by Cogito with a geographic bound-
ing box (a coordinate rectangle containing the relevant locations and resources in the
document). These bounding boxes can be used to instantly identify all the documents
relevant to any area worldwide, and selection can be further filtered by topic, catego-
ry, contained entities, etc. In this way, the Group can immediately have all and only
those documents strictly related to any geographical location in the world, ranked by
distance, relevance to topic, etc.
Social and political awareness: Websites providing breaking news announce up-
risings in the Gombe State of Nigeria. The Company has a major oil plant in this re-
gion so Analysts are keeping this area (and others) monitored with the Cogito plat-
form.
News of the uprisings is “pushed” to the operators without user action, thus notify-
ing the Company as soon as news is available. This gives the Company the opportuni-
ty to immediately deploy evacuation or other security-related procedures for the staff
and families working in the plant, before the staff itself is even aware of the uprising.
3.1 The facts
While some particulars of these stories are fictional, the overall narratives are not.
Global Oil & Gas Companies face situations similar to these on a daily basis. These
companies are present in many countries, and world events can trigger new expendi-
tures and changes in strategic direction. To address these unique challenges and bene-
fit from early and accurate notification, the solution is an investment in an innovative
business intelligence platform.
Companies have turned to Expert System’s Cogito platform for an especially pre-
cise tool to help them improve the information flow from external sources, enhance
data management and make the best use of the intellectual capital within the compa-
ny.
4 The future
Semantic technology has played, and will continue to play, a critical role in sup-
porting strategic decision processes, handling data in internal knowledge generation
and management, and monitoring and detecting early signals of change in the energy
markets.
For the future, Expert System customers can expect that this collaborative invest-
ment in semantic intelligence will contribute to the enhancement of the knowledge
management process in other parts of the company worldwide and solve the problems
of
x Wasting efforts on poor content, through an early selection of high quality infor-
mation without “fully reading” the text.
x Not finding/receiving information that could be potentially detrimental to the busi-
ness.
x The unnecessary re-creation of content, because managing knowledge with seman-
tics overcomes the “If we only knew what we know” syndrome.