Identifying the Emerging Safety Technologies Using Futuristic Data: Topic Modeling and Diversity Approach

Abstract

As rapid technology advances with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, technological evolution can cause various safety problems derived from the unsettled technological change. In this situation, the importance of safety technologies is rapidly increasing to solve the problem such as security issues. So, the purpose of this study is exploring the safety technologies to prepare for facing threats, and identifying whether these technologies can be considered as emerging in the future. To do this, we gather the futuristic data, a collection of future-oriented experts’ opinions extracted from online forums, communities and reports. Then, topic modeling with LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) is conducted to select the technologies which will have various emerging issues in the future. Lastly, the influence of selected technologies is evaluated through diversity, which can be used as the indicators of contributions to technological and social development. For conducting empirical study, we selected the field of bio-security that addresses hazards threaten health and bio-safety. This study can provide the systematic framework to identify the emerging technology by using topic modeling, which can reflect the possible technological and social issues from the future-oriented experts’ opinions.