A deep neural network-based method for deep information extraction using transfer learning strategies to support automated compliance checking

Existing automated compliance checking (ACC) systems require the extraction of requirements from regulatory documents into computer-processable representations. These information extraction (IE) processes are either fully manual, semi-automated, or automated. Semi-automated and manual approaches typically use manual annotations or predefined IE rules, which lack sufficient flexibility and scalability; the annotations and rules typically need adaptation if the characteristics of the regulatory document change. There is, thus, a need for a fully automated IE approach that can achieve high and consistent performance across different types of regulatory documents for supporting ACC. To address this need, this paper proposes a deep neural network-based method for deep IE – extracting semantic and syntactic information elements – from regulatory documents in the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) domain. The proposed method was evaluated in extracting information from multiple regulatory documents in the AEC domain. It achieved average precision and recall of 93.1% and 92.9%, respectively.