© 2017 IBM Corporation

Solving the Unstructured Data Problem – Case Study

Subodh Manicka, Exec IT Architect, IBM Corporation

Randall Ho, Senior IT Architect, IBM Corporation

Function of a Government

• A primary function of government is to protect citizens from harm

� Personal safety and security

� Unfair trade practice

� Etc.

• We expect our government to

� Keep the citizens safe from bad people

� Regulate automobile and consumer product safety

� Regulate drug and medical device safety

� Regulate medical device safety

� Regulate unfair trade practice

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How does the Government address this?

• Through Laws and Regulations

• Investigating safety issues or concerns reported by citizens

• Defending the country from enemies of the state

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Headlines Related to Automobile Safety

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Headlines Related to Consumer Product Safety

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Headlines Related to Citizens Comments to Regulations

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Impact to Business

Examples of Government Agencies• USA

� Federal Communications Commission

� Consumer Product Safety Commission

� National Highway Traffic Safety Agency

� Food and Drug Administration

• Canada

� Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

� Office of Consumer Affairs

� Transport Canada’s Motor Vehicle Safety Directorate

� Health Canada

• Australia

� Australian Communications and Media Authority

� Australian Competition and Consumer Commission

� Vehicle Safety Standards Branch, Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development

� ACPM, ARGMD, Therapeutic goods Administration

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• UK

� Office of Communication

� Office of Fair Trading

� Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency

� Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency

• Germany

� Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur)

� Verbraucherschutzminister

� Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development

� Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices

• Austria

� Austrian Regulatory Authority for Broadcasting and Telecommunications

� Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection

� Austrian Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology

Process and Action

• Citizens discover safety issue or other concerns

• Citizens voice their concern by submitting complaints

• Citizens provide feedback on upcoming regulations

• To fulfil its mission, government agencies analyze data that they receive and from various sources including citizens and manufactures

• Following investigation, government agencies act on the concern through product recall or change in regulations

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Sample Forms

US Automobile – Safecar.gov

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Sample Forms

UK Automobile Report Form

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Sample Forms

Australia Automobile

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Sample Forms

US Consumer Product Safety

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Sample Forms

Australian Consumer Product Safety

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Sample Forms

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Sample Forms

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Challenges with the Data

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• Data volume fluctuates with significant spikes at times

• Citizens misspelling words

• Information is typically a mix of structured data and unstructured text

• Meaning of words may depend on context

� Examples:

• Lead – the element lead in paint that is poisonous or the government regulation that leads to higher consumer cost.

• “Engine caught fire” vs. “Fire department suspects transmission fuel leak”

• Fruit flies like banana

• “Shot” a bear – with a camera vs with a gun

The Architecture

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IT Context Diagram

Cognos BI

Complaints / Issues

Unstructured Data

Analytics

Data Warehouse

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Case Solution

Solution Software Stack

• IBM Watson Explorer Advanced Edition (Content Analytics Components)

• IBM Datacap (Path #1)

• IBM Content Collector (Path #1)

• IBM Content Classification

• IBM PureData System (Path #2)

• IBM Case Manager (Path #3)

• Cognos BI (Path #4)

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Logical Architecture of Solution

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Enhancements with Watson Services

• Data Ingest Challenges

� Wide variety of formats – text, image, audio etc.

• Watson APIs

� Speech to Text

� Visual Recognition

� Language Translator

� Natural Language Classifier

� Natural Language Understanding

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Potential Applications

• Potential areas of application

� Citizen Services

• Consumer product safety (Ex: CPSC)

• Automobile safety (Ex: NHTSA)

• Drug and Medical devices Safety (Ex: FDA)

• Health and Medical Research (Ex: NIH)

• Enterprise unstructured data processing

� Analyzing comments on regulations (Ex: FCC)

� Seized media analysis (Ex: Intel and Defense)

• Any place where volumes of unstructured or semi structured contents need to be analyzed for insight

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