The exponential increase in information volumes in E&P means that most energy companies are faced with rapidly growing volumes of information that is increasingly difficult to find, of uncertain value and often lacking in business context. The use of taxonomies to help manage large amounts of disparate information is not new, however it has only recently been widely identified as a valuable approach for the E&P industry.
Most professionals are spending more time trying to find information than ever before and increasingly distrust the information they are able to retrieve. Management are frustrated by extended cycle times and senior executives are increasingly concerned about risk-related aspects of business information, loss of the organization's knowledge and the need for a rigorous audit trail. Information overload is becoming a problem for everyone. In many instances the corporate information asset has become a liability.
In a faceted taxonomy each kind of (or dimension) information used to classify an asset, document or information item is contained in a single taxonomy. Each dimension contains a single kind of information. Often the information contents of a dimension are hierarchical, although this is not always the case.
Two kinds of hierarchies may exist in a faceted taxonomy, but each facet (dimension) should use one and only one of these.
1. In each dimension, the child values are kinds of (or subtypes of) the parent. For example, dogs and cats are both KINDS OF mammals.
2. In each dimension, child value are parts of the parent. For example, heads, legs and tails are PARTS OF mammals.
Combining classification results from many dimensions lets us very accurately identify and describe documents. Think of this as dimensional or faceted triangulation.