Applying context to organize unstructured information in aerospace industry

A large portion of information created within business activity is unstructured and as a consequence much useful information is buried inside. Within the aerospace industry, an added challenge is that long product lifecycles require such unstructured information to be accessible over a long period of time. In this paper, the authors have examined and identified promising techniques that can collectively contribute to the better organization of unstructured information. Two industrial case studies were conducted to examine the current practices of organizing this unstructured information in some engineering departments. As a result, a number of key challenges in organizing and dealing with the unstructured information elements within an engineering setting are identified. Subsequently, a set of requirements of a desired intelligent system are developed, particularly associated with the important guiding topic of context. These requirements are then used to guide the design of an example Context Based Search Platform which demonstrates promising potential for dealing with multi-dimensional and complex data sets.