Latest news and updates
Dragonfly: Thematic analysis in the age of AI
October 2024: Many organisations have large amounts of written text. Thematic analysis allows the topics in documents to be summarised, clustered, and analysed.
Large Language Models like ChatGPT have burst onto the scene, bringing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to everybody's fingertips. Language models generate text in a way that is almost miraculous. In order to carry out this trick, they first need to learn about text by reading it. To process text, language models rely on an underlying technology that translates text into numbers. Called an embedding, this technology represents sentences or paragraphs as numbers, in a way that similar concepts end up numerically close to each other. The embedding provides a mapping from concepts or themes into numbers.
Because of the richness of language, with the same word having different meanings in different contexts, generating this embedding is a tricky process. It needs to be able to understand that while 'dog' might often go with 'canine', 'hot dog' is more likely to be close to 'hamburger'.
Image: Dragonfly Data Science.
Aqualinc: Shallow groundwater - a threat and an opportunity
October 2024: Cantabrians are acutely aware of the damage caused by liquefaction during the 2010/11 earthquakes. While most of this damage occurred in urban areas, rural areas were also affected, depending on groundwater depth and soil properties.
Despite these risks, data on shallow groundwater is limited, especially outside Christchurch's central city. However, Christchurch City Council now routinely collects groundwater depth data, a crucial step for city planners and engineers to mitigate risks such as liquefaction and other threats to property and health posed by shallow groundwater.
What is less known is that shallow groundwater can also be beneficial as a source of irrigation water. This largely unrecognised resource can support primary production in some areas, either through drainage water use or in-situ use of shallow groundwater. Drainage water has been utilised for irrigation on parts of the lower Canterbury Plains for decades.
Photo: Aqualinc.