Visual trend analysis: Ontology evolution support for the trend related industry sector

Ontologies are used as knowledge bases to exchange, extract and integrate information in information retrieval and search. They provide a shared and common understanding that reaches across people and application systems. In reality, domain specific and technical knowledge evolve over time, and so must ontologies. Creative domains, as for example the home textile industry, are representatives for quickly evolving domains. In this domain it is also important to provide methodologies for the visualisation of knowledge evolution. In this paper we report on our ontology-based trend analysis tool, which supports marketing experts and designers to identify trend drifts, and to compare the analysis results against the ontology. Furthermore means to adapt and evolve the ontology in accordance with the changing domain are provided.