Modern machine learning technologies provide an overview in the jungle of terms in standardization

Digitalization is making huge strides and yet, this development is still in its infancy. Cybersecurity and IT security are becoming increasingly important and must be coordinated with other sectors. This results in, among other things, a stronger convergence with functional safety.

However, the manual integration of various terminology worlds is difficult: Duplications, inconsistencies and contradictory definitions result from distributed responsibilities and a rapidly increasing number of publications. Recognizing this is a challenging task. In common standardization practice, this means

• combing through countless lists,
• comparing a wide variety of definitions and
• tediously building a conceptual system.

The Harbsafe project has since been completed, however, a continuation as “Harbsafe 2” has already been planned. “Harbsafe 2” will primarily focus on expanding the scopes of the terms. The objective is to create a comprehensive tool for intelligently browsing the VDE|DKE terminology lexicon. Ideally, it will provide the essentials at a glance:

• all formulations of a term
• all terms for a designation
• the most important, explicit and implicit references

Thoroughness is necessary, however, it takes a lot of time and it is very easy to overlook something. In the future, modern technology will make it possible to get more complete results faster.

Editor’s note:

The “Harbsafe” project is funded by the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWi (Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy)) (funding code: 03TNG006A and 03TNG006B).