Dortmunder Energie- und Wasserversorgung GmbH (DEW21) was founded in 1995. As a modern and sustainable municipal partner, DEW21 stands for deep and versatile expertise in secure energy and water supply that is continuously adapted to the needs of its customers and the market. Becoming a modern life-supply company, not only classic energy products but also the supply of digital solutions in an urban context (SmartCity) play a decisive role.

1.

Challenge Introduction

Creation of a software solution for semantic analysis of texts in digital media, social media and blogs / forums to identify customer behavior, trends and current topics.

2.

Challenge Details

In an increasingly digitalized world, it is becoming ever more crucial to identify trends at an early stage and also to analyze the behavior of customers in the digital sphere and to draw appropriate conclusions from this. DEW21, as the utility company of the city of Dortmund, also faces this challenge. In order to tackle this, a solution is to be created within the scope of the challenge to analyze activities in various digital channels and to create reports and analyses based on this so that appropriate strategies and measures can be derived.
The solution should perform the analyses automatically and present them in reports with various visualization options. DEW21 employees should only initiate the analysis process and set the intervals at which the analyses are to be carried out and the reports created.
A mandatory requirement for the solution in terms of analysis is that it includes, in particular, online newspaper articles, blog posts, forum entries and social media. Likewise, the first step only requires the analysis of German-language texts. However, an analysis of texts in other languages in the area of social media and locally limited to North Rhine-Westphalia should also be available in the future. The solution should have appropriate filter functions (e.g., focus on a specific source, spatial restrictions, language, analysis period, and frequency of analysis) that can be used to specify or narrow down the analyses. An optional feature of the solution is image analysis (logos of DEW21 and subsidiaries) in social media. A thematic focus of the analysis should also be individually selectable. Topics could be, for example, electricity/water/gas, power outages, in connection with DEW21 as a company as well as its subsidiaries DONETZ, DOdata or stadtenergie. In a further expansion stage, a semantic analysis with regard to the tonality (positive, neutral, negative) of the contributions is also possible.

The automated reports must be customizable by employees, especially in terms of their presentation (e.g. diagrams, colors, etc.) and frequency of generation.