Kim Yu-bean, the Director General of Research Support Office, has proposed an algorithm to derive issue candidates from a vast amount of literature data based on the definition of “emerging issues”, finding the literature with a pattern similar to such a definition.
Emerging issues mean issues (discoveries, events, or phenomenon) that have not been influential or important in the past but might be influential in the future. In order to respond to future environmental changes, it is important to continuously identify emerging issues that are now negligibly influential but potentially turned into future or mega-trends, since the emerging issues are likely to become dominant in about 5-10 years and act as a driving force for social changes.
Studies so far have mainly explored various issues through listening to opinions of experts, interviews, and brainstorming, but had limitations to discovery and evaluate issues from multiple perspectives due to expert bias and excessive amount of multidisciplinary information. In this study, Kim proposed a new methodology to search for issue candidates covering science, technology, humanities and society by using a vast amount of literatures, which is a literature-based algorithm to define entering issues and quickly derive candidates from literatures in consideration of novelty, fast-growth and impact, followed by selection of final issues through peer review on the candidates. Keywords from various perspectives were derived when applying the proposed algorithm to the digital transformation, including ICT-based technology, digital literacy, digital adaptation, and new opportunities.
“We expect emerging issues analysis will be actively conducted if this algorithm is open online platform with the expanded function to enable general-purpose data input, contributing to enhancing our society’s future-proof capability,” explains Kim.
* “National Future Strategic Insight” is a brief report which is issued every two weeks to provide strategic insights for our future based on in-depth analysis of major issues made by professional researchers at the National Assembly Futures Institute (NAFI).
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