An exploration of text mining of narrative reports of injury incidents to assess risk

¹ Penn State University, Workforce Education and Development, 305D Keller, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA 16802
² Penn State University, Applied Cognitive Science Lab, E365 IST Building, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA 16802
³ Federal State Educational Institution of Higher Education, National Research Moscow State University of Civil Engineering, Yaroslavskoye Shosse 26, Moscow, 129337 Russian Federation
⁴ University of North Texas, Learning Technologies, Discovery Park, G150, 3940 North Elm Street, Denton, Texas USA 76207
⁵ University of Georgia, Lifelong Education, Administration, and Policy, 850 College Station Road, Athens, Georgia, USA 30602

^* Corresponding author: passmore.david@gmail.com

Abstract

A topic model was explored using unsupervised machine learning to summarized free-text narrative reports of 77,215 injuries that occurred in coal mines in the USA between 2000 and 2015. Latent Dirichlet Allocation modeling processes identified six topics from the free-text data. One topic, a theme describing primarily injury incidents resulting in strains and sprains of musculoskeletal systems, revealed differences in topic emphasis by the location of the mine property at which injuries occurred, the degree of injury, and the year of injury occurrence. Text narratives clustered around this topic refer most frequently to surface or other locations rather than underground locations that resulted in disability and that, also, increased secularly over time. The modeling success enjoyed in this exploratory effort suggests that additional topic mining of these injury text narratives is justified, especially using a broad set of covariates to explain variations in topic emphasis and for comparison of surface mining injuries with injuries occurring during site preparation for construction.