Projects
Projects: Projects for Investigator |
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| Reference Number | NIA_NGGT0104 | |
| Title | Cognitive Technology for Technical Standards | |
| Status | Completed | |
| Energy Categories | Fossil Fuels: Oil Gas and Coal(Oil and Gas, Refining, transport and storage of oil and gas) 100%; | |
| Research Types | Applied Research and Development 100% | |
| Science and Technology Fields | ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering) 100% | |
| UKERC Cross Cutting Characterisation | Not Cross-cutting 100% | |
| Principal Investigator |
Project Contact No email address given National Grid Gas Transmission |
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| Award Type | Network Innovation Allowance | |
| Funding Source | Ofgem | |
| Start Date | 01 December 2016 | |
| End Date | 01 June 2017 | |
| Duration | 6 months | |
| Total Grant Value | £460,000 | |
| Industrial Sectors | Technical Consultancy | |
| Region | London | |
| Programme | Network Innovation Allowance | |
| Investigators | Principal Investigator | Project Contact , National Grid Gas Transmission (100.000%) |
| Web Site | http://www.smarternetworks.org/project/NIA_NGGT0104 |
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| Objectives | The objective of the project is to assess and demonstrate the application of cognitive technology in an Asset Engineering sphere of knowledge. The project will build a corpus of knowledge across National Grid’s Technical Standard Documents and Third Party Enquiry process (SSW/22), allowing the application of three tools from the IBM Watson suite. The tools will be trialled to demonstrate how it can engage intuitively with its users to learn from training and feedback to discover insights across the knowledge repository. These insights will aide in decision making by removing human biases and providing intelligent evidence based inferences based on industry best practices. The project will produce a test environment of both the engineering knowledge and standards advisor that can be transferred to Business as Usual at the end of the project. A demonstration of the Conversation Bot will be produced to demonstrate the application of this technology in a Gas Transmission Stakeholder environment. The system development and training elements supporting delivery of the three use cases will enable the business to develop a value assessment tool. This will enable Gas Transmission to assess the potential of cognitive technology in the engineering knowledge sphere and support targeted future deployment to fully leveraging the value of the tool. Success will be delivery of the three stages stated above. This in turn will enable the testing of decision making based on the reasoning and recommendations of cognitive technology. The technology should enable the business to better leverage subject matter experts through reduction of low level standards enquiries; enhance the technical standards development process driving value through more agile responsive and consistency standards; significantly enhance the ability of technical standards users to interrogate technical standards; drive efficiencies in the third party process and demonstrate the potential to provide a conversation bot to external stakeholders. Further, this proof of concept will enable the business to understand how cognitive technology can bring benefit to knowledge spheres; identify areas for application and assess business value. Longer term, this project will inform the wider vision for an intelligent system that can capture knowledge, expertise and experience supplied in a variety of formats, and to provide a powerful capability inform decisions based on the best practice across a range of business processes. | |
| Abstract | As an asset manager responsible for 7,500km of pipeline and assets, National Grid has a vast distribution of knowledge spread across a wide range of sources. A large proportion of knowledge is held by our employees through their experience and expertise and in many cases this is not captured in a tangible form. The source of knowledge is varied, and can be internal or in some cases external. It is often in an unstructured format. A number of routine, complex and critical processes rely on the interpretation of this knowledge by individuals to execute the process. The Gas Transmission business faces three core challenges associated with Knowledge retention and subsequent decision making 1) Engineering knowledge is dispersed across over 600 technical standards, numerous associated reports and supporting data; 2) The business has an ageing workforce and a number of experts are nearing retirement age; 3) The regulator and commercial environment requires greater agility and efficiency in decision making. Cognitive Technology differs from traditional computing methodologies in that it is capable of handling unstructured data; building & retaining knowledge; understanding natural language; applying reasoning and learning from interactions with humans. The technology is an opportunity to address the business challenges listed above through the capture of knowledge spread across various sources, alongside the experience and expertise of individuals to create an amalgamation of knowledge and information. On completion of knowledge curation and system training, cognitive technology will provide a tangible and intelligent method to interrogate this knowledge in a timely, effective and consistent manner. Achieving this will unlock the full potential of the knowledge contained in technical standards, making more informed, consistent decisions that deliver the greatest value to our customers. The project aims to prove the concept of capturing a subset of existing knowledge and information within Gas Transmission through the application of Cognitive Technology. The subset chosen is the 630 standards documents and in particular information supporting the Third Party Enquiry Process (SSW/22), which will be included as part of the trial, as it currently requires a large amount of information interrogation and cross-referencing. The Cognitive Technology tool that has been identified as a candidate vehicle to build this cognitive capability across the suite of Gas Transmission knowledge is the IBM Watson core engine. During this project, these capabilities will be configured and developed for specific use cases which involves R&D concepts of - content annotation, natural language querying and conversational based interaction. This project will result in a pilot which will be achieved in 3 key stages: Build a "Engineering Standards Cognitive Advisor" - A repository of all relevant standards with capability to quickly find concise answers to questions regarding the standards. The application will demonstrate helping users find the most relevant information for their query by using a combination of search and machine learning algorithms to detect "signals" in the data, thereby demonstrating cognitive search across the Gas Transmission Operator (GTO) business. Build a "Engineering knowledge cognitive advisor" - A repository of all relevant standards, third party enquiry process and supporting information with capability to search , explore and interpret the content in a cognitive manner. The advisor will provide a unified information application and build upon the work completed for the Engineering Standards Cognitive Advisor. Build a "Cognitive conversation bot" - A conversational messaging application with that facilitates a natural language based conversation between a user and a "cognitive knowledge advisor" that guides a user through successful completion of common repeatable business processes.Note : Project Documents may be available via the ENA Smarter Networks Portal using the Website link above | |
| Publications | (none) |
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| Final Report | (none) |
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| Added to Database | 09/08/18 | |
