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Organizing Information from technical reports by KK Aw Multicentric Technology Sdn Bhd

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The problem <ul><li>Professionals have to deal with voluminous reports each covering a range of issues. </li></ul><ul><li>Just storing digital versions of these reports in a digital and using a search engine would not be effective – </li></ul><ul><ul><li>The search will return many reports </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>The users will still be left to process the reports on his/her own. </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Senior professionals may have read these reports some time in their career but they do not have total recall. Younger professionals will have to read them to catch-up with the seniors. </li></ul>

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How reports are organized <ul><li>A typical reports may be divided into the following: </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Volumes if the coverage is very large </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Sections and Chapters </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Appendices </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Within reports there may be tables, pictures, maps, illustrations etc. </li></ul><ul><li>A table of contents is usually provided. </li></ul>

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Possible solution <ul><li>Combine all the table of contents of all the reports </li></ul><ul><ul><li>This may be problematic as the table of contents may be designed differently for different purposes. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Terminology used are not standardized. </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Designed a generic table of contents that may include the following – </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Physical information </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Environmental information </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Structural information </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Cross-cutting information. </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Add sub-headings under the main headings in this new table of contents to provide a higher resolution of the subject matter. </li></ul><ul><li>This becomes the Information Architecture of the domain. </li></ul>

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Posting Technical Report against the Information Architecture Technical Report <ul><li>A technical report can most likely be posted against multiple sub-headings. </li></ul><ul><li>Organizing information in this manner is not useful as we are mixing low resolution information (reports) with higher resolution information architecture. </li></ul>Information Architecture Structural Sub-heading 1 Sub-heading 2 Sub-heading 3 Environmental Sub-heading 1 Sub-heading 2 Sub-heading 3 Physical Sub-heading 1 Sub-heading 2 Sub-heading 3

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Report Chapters Appendices Tables Images Maps Drawings, etc. Assertions Recommendations Report Disaggregation A report can be disaggregated into smaller units of information

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Technical Report Resource 1 Resource 2 Resource 3 Resource 4 Resource 5 Resource 6 Resource 7 Posting Disaggregated Information against the Information Architecture Disaggregated Resources Structural Sub-heading 1 Sub-heading 2 Sub-heading 3 Environmental Sub-heading 1 Sub-heading 2 Sub-heading 3 Physical Sub-heading 1 Sub-heading 2 Sub-heading 3 Information Architecture

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Conclusion <ul><li>The reports are preprocessed into smaller units of information thus increasing their accessibility and usability. </li></ul><ul><li>Similar information from multiple reports can now be compared. </li></ul><ul><li>If we count the number of resources in each sub-headings in the Information Architecture, we know a little better of what we know and what we don’t. </li></ul><ul><li>We still need a relationship management engine to managed and let us explore the information resources nexus. </li></ul>