IP Library › Granted Patent US 12,488,188
Granted Patent B2
US 12,488,188 · App. 17/655,207 · Granted Dec 2, 2025

Automated decision modelling from text

Inventors: Vanessa Lopez Garcia (Dublin, IE); Thanh Lam Hoang (Maynooth, IE); Yufang Hou (Dublin, IE); Denisa Claudia Moga (Collegewood, IE); Gabriele Picco (Dublin, IE); Marco Luca Sbodio (Castaheany, IE); Inge Lise Vejsbjerg (Dublin, IE)
Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
G06F40/35G06F40/211G06F40/253G06F40/295
View Patent ↗
Loading inventors, assignments & file history…
Monitor This Case
Get email alerts when status or documents change.
Order Certified Copies
Most orders are placed with the USPTO same day — all within 24 business hours.
Order via The Patent Place →
Pre-filled with this patent's details
Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 12,488,188
App. No.
17/655,207
Granted
Dec 2, 2025
Kind
B2
Abstract

The present inventive concept provides for a method for automated decision modelling from text including obtaining a text corpus including a policy. Terms and syntax are identified within the text corpus related to the policy. Sentence similarities and co-references based on the terms and syntax are identified. Discourse and sentence level semantic parsing is performed based on the terms and the sentence similarities and the co-references using machine learning. A decision model template is generated based on the discourse and semantic parsing, and the decision model template is transformed into an automated decision model.

Claims (68)

1 . A computer-implemented method for automated decision modelling from text, the method comprising:

obtaining, via a network, a text corpus including a policy;

applying natural language processing (NLP) to the text corpus to extract terms and syntax within the text corpus related to the policy;

determining sentence similarities and co-references, within the text corpus, based on the terms and the syntax,

wherein determining the sentence similarities and co-references comprises:

generating, using a first transformer model, text embedding vectors for sentence fragments of the sentence similarities and co-references, and

applying a second transformer model to the text embedding vectors and the sentence fragments to determine the sentence similarities and co-references within the text corpus,

wherein the second transformer model is applied to the text embedding vectors and the sentence fragments to determine redundant sentences of a same rule for a same decision within the text corpus, and

wherein similarity between a pair of the sentence fragments is calculated, using the second transformer model, as an aggregated similarity of the text embedding vectors and a bag of noun-phrases and verb-phrases extracted from the sentence fragments;

performing discourse and sentence level semantic parsing based on the terms and the sentence similarities and the co-references using machine learning;

generating a decision model template based on the discourse and sentence level semantic parsing; and

transforming the decision model template into an automated decision model.

2 . The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the text corpus includes a single document, and wherein the terms include terms that are related to a decision and criteria therefor.

3 . The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the NLP includes named-entity recognition (NER) and a parsing tree,

wherein applying the NLP to the text corpus to extract the terms and syntax comprises:

applying the NLP to the text corpus to extract named-entities,

wherein the same decision includes an entitlement, a user agreement, a benefit, a penalty, or a compliance certification.

4 . The computer-implemented method of claim 3 , wherein identifying the terms includes using a knowledge graph, and

wherein the knowledge graph represents a network of terms and illustrates relationships between the terms.

5 . The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the text corpus includes a decision, and wherein the similar sentences are rules in the decision.

6 . The computer-implemented method of claim 5 , wherein determining the sentence similarities and co-references comprises determining the sentence similarities and co-references based on predetermined thresholds of matching terms, synonyms, semantics, syntax, and ontology.

7 . The computer-implemented method of claim 6 , wherein anaphora resolution (AR) is used to identify synonyms to identified terms and pronouns, wherein the sentence fragments of the sentence similarities and co-references are given text embedding vectors using the first transformer model, wherein the bag of noun-phrases and verb-phrases is extracted from the sentence fragments using an abstract meaning representation (AMR) parser, and wherein similarity between a pair of sentence fragments is calculated, using the second transformer model, as the aggregated similarity of the text embedding vectors and the bags of noun-phrases and verb phrases using similarity between sentence embeddings.

8 . The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , further comprising:

identifying categories for text spans of the policy related to a decision in the text corpus; and

generating a decision model template outlining decision logic and identified categories from the text corpus.

9 . The computer-implemented method of claim 8 , further comprising:

parsing text spans based upon rhetoric structure theory (RST); and

using a cluster algorithm to group text spans based on embeddings into the identified categories.

10 . The computer-implemented method of claim 9 , wherein the decision model includes a decision requirement diagram (DRD) depicting the identified categories and decision logic in the text corpus.

11 . The computer-implemented method of claim 10 , wherein the DRD includes a hierarchy of decision boxes based upon the categories and decision logic, wherein each decision box includes a decision table with rules expressed in Boolean, wherein the Boolean is extracted from text spans using curated labelled data and AMR parsers with provided syntactical dependency rules for extracting logical expressions, and wherein the rules expressed inside the decision tables are in a standardized standard friendly enough expression language (S-FEEL) language.

12 . A computer program product for automated decision modelling from text, the computer program comprising:

one or more computer-readable storage media and program instructions stored on the one or more computer-readable storage media, the program instructions comprising:

program instructions to obtain a text corpus including a policy;

program instructions to apply natural language processing (NLP) to the text corpus to extract terms and syntax within the text corpus related to the policy;

program instructions to determine, using transformer models, sentence similarities and co-references based on the terms and the syntax,

wherein the program instructions to determine the sentence similarities and co-references include:

program instructions to generate, using a first transformer model, text embedding vectors for sentence fragments of the sentence similarities and co-references, and

program instructions to apply a second transformer model to the text embedding vectors and the sentence fragments to determine the sentence similarities and co-references within the text corpus,

wherein similarity between a pair of the sentence fragments is calculated, using the second transformer model, as an aggregated similarity of the text embedding vectors and a bag of noun-phrases and verb-phrases extracted from the sentence fragments;

program instructions to perform discourse and sentence level semantic parsing based on the terms and the sentence similarities and the co-references using machine learning;

program instructions to generate a decision model template based on the discourse and sentence level semantic parsing; and

program instructions to transform the decision model template into an automated decision model.

13 . The computer program product of claim 12 , wherein the terms include terms that are related to a decision and criteria therefor.

14 . The computer program product of claim 13 , wherein the NLP includes named-entity recognition (NER) and a parsing tree.

15 . The computer program product of claim 14 , wherein the program instructions to identify the terms comprise program instructions to use a knowledge graph.

16 . The computer program product of claim 12 , wherein the text corpus includes a decision, and wherein the similar sentences are rules in the decision.

17 . The computer program product of claim 16 , wherein the program instructions to identify the sentence similarities and co-references include program instructions to identify the sentence similarities and co-references based on predetermined thresholds of matching terms, synonyms, semantics, syntax, and ontology.

18 . The computer program product of claim 17 , wherein anaphora resolution (AR) is used to identify synonyms to identified terms and pronouns, wherein the sentence fragments of the sentence similarities and co-references are given text embedding vectors using pretrained language models, wherein the pretrained language models include bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) model, wherein the bag of noun-phrases and verb-phrases is extracted from the sentence fragments using an abstract meaning representation (AMR) parser, and wherein similarity between a pair of sentence fragments is calculated as an aggregated similarity of the text embedding vectors and the bags of noun-phrases and verb-phrases using similarity between sentence embeddings.

19 . The computer program product of claim 12 , the program instructions further comprising:

program instructions to identify categories for text spans of the policy related to a decision in the text corpus; and

program instructions to generate a decision model template outlining decision logic and identified categories from the text corpus.

20 . A computer system for automated decision modelling from text, the computer system comprising:

one or more computer processors, one or more computer-readable storage media, and program instructions stored on the one or more of the computer-readable storage media for execution by at least one of the one or more processors, the program instructions comprising:

program instructions to obtain a text corpus including a policy;

program instructions to apply natural language processing (NLP) to the text corpus to extract terms and syntax within the text corpus related to the policy;

program instructions to determine, using transformer models, sentence similarities and co-references based on the terms and the syntax,

wherein the program instructions to determine the sentence similarities and co-references include:

program instructions to generate, using a first transformer model, text embedding vectors for sentence fragments of the sentence similarities and co-references, and

program instructions to apply a second transformer model to the text embedding vectors and the sentence fragments to determine the sentence similarities and co-references within the text corpus,

wherein similarity between a pair of the sentence fragments is calculated, using the second transformer model, as an aggregated similarity of the text embedding vectors and a bag of noun-phrases of verb-phrases extracted from the sentence fragments;

program instructions to perform discourse and sentence level semantic parsing based on the terms and the sentence similarities and the co-references using machine learning;

program instructions to generate a decision model template based on the discourse and sentence level semantic parsing; and

program instructions to transform the decision model template into an automated decision model.

21 . The computer system of claim 20 , wherein the terms include terms that are related to a decision and criteria therefor.

22 . The computer system of claim 20 , wherein the NLP includes named-entity recognition (NER) and a parsing tree.

23 . The computer system of claim 20 , wherein the program instructions to apply NLP to the text corpus to extract the terms include program instructions to use a knowledge graph to identify the terms.

24 . The computer system of claim 20 , wherein the text corpus includes a decision, wherein the decision includes an entitlement, a user agreement, a benefit, a penalty, or a compliance certification, and wherein the similar sentences are rules in the decision.

25 . The computer system of claim 24 , wherein the sentence similarities and co-references are determined based on predetermined thresholds of matching terms, synonyms, semantics, syntax, and ontology.

Assignments (1)
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Mar 17, 2022
From: LOPEZ GARCIA, VANESSA; HOANG, THANH LAM; HOU, YUFANG; MOGA, DENISA CLAUDIA; PICCO, GABRIELE; SBODIO, MARCO LUCA; VEJSBJERG, INGE LISE
To: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
Reel/Frame 059292/0263 →
Continuity (1)
Related Publication 20230297784A1 · Sep 21, 2023
References Cited (44)
US 10380508B2 · Prismon · 2019 [cited by applicant]
US 20160140588A1 · Bracewell · 2016 [cited by examiner]
US 20190347297A1 · Galitsky · 2019 [cited by examiner]
US 20200126017A1 · Damonte · 2020 [cited by applicant]
US 20210216580A1 · Liu · 2021 [cited by examiner]
US 20220188949A1 · Mulligan · 2022 [cited by examiner]
US 20230289377A1 · Chopra · 2023 [cited by examiner]
Arco et al. “Natural language techniques supporting decision modelers” Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery (2021) 35:290-320 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10618-020-00718-4 (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10618-0… [cited by examiner]
Po-Sen, et al. “A study of using syntactic cues in short-text similarity measure.” Journal of Internet Technology 20.3 (2019): 839-850. (https://jit.ndhu.edu.tw/article/view/2062/2074). (Year: 2019). [cited by examiner]
Quishpi et al. (2021). Extracting Decision Models from Textual Descriptions of Processes. In: Polyvyanyy, A., Wynn, M.T., Van Looy , A., Reichert, M. (eds) Business Process Management. BPM 2021. Lecture Notes in Compute… [cited by examiner]
Bhojanapalli, Srinadh, et al. “Leveraging redundancy in attention with reuse transformers.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.06821 (2021). (Year: 2021). [cited by examiner]
Bajwa et al., “SBVR Business Rules Generation from Natural Language Specification”, https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/SSS/SSS11/paper/viewPaper/2378, ResearchGate, Conference: AAAI 2011 Spring Symposium Series—AI for B… [cited by applicant]
Bevilacqua et al., “One Spring to Rule Them Both: Symmetric AMR Semantic Parsing and Generation without a Complex Pipeline”, https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/17489, Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on … [cited by applicant]
Blloshmi et al., “Spring is a seq2seq model for Text-to-AMR and AMR-to-Text (AAAI2021)”, https://github.com/SapienzaNLP/spring, SapienzaNLP/spring, Feb. 1, 2022, pp. 1-5. [cited by applicant]
Ceps, “Study on the costs of compliance for the financial sector”,https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/4b62e682-4e0f-11ea-aece-01aa75ed71a1, Publications Office of the European Union, Feb. 12, 2020, … [cited by applicant]
Chittimalli et al., “BuRRiTo: a Framework to Extract, Specify, Verify and Analyze Business Rules”, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8952315, 2019 34th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software… [cited by applicant]
Disclosed Anonymously, “A Generic Method for Correlating Formatted Lines of Plain Text to Structured Graphical Elements to Enable Visualization Updates”, https://ip.com/IPCOM/000215526, Mar. 6, 2012, pp. 1-19. [cited by applicant]
Disclosed Anonymously, “Method and System for Detecting Emotions in Text”, https://ip.com/IPCOM/000240190, Jan. 11, 2015, pp. 1-7. [cited by applicant]
Disclosed Anonymously, “Method of Visualizing Semantic Deltas in Diagrams using Affinity”, https://ip.com/IPCOM/000199645, Sep. 13, 2010, pp. 1-10. [cited by applicant]
Etikala et al., “Text2Dec: Extracting Decision Dependencies from Natural Language Text for Automated DMN Decision Modelling”, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66498-5_27, ResearchGate, Springer Nature Switzerland AG 20… [cited by applicant]
Fries et al., “Ontology-driven weak supervision for clinical entity classification in electronic health records”, Nature Communications, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22328-4, Article No. 12:2017, 2021, pp.… [cited by applicant]
Garcia et al., “Natural Language Techniques Supporting Decision Modelers”, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345683219, Researchgate, Springer, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery 35(5), Jan. 2021, pp. 1-21. [cited by applicant]
Government of Canada, “Fish harvester Benefit and Grant Program”, https://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fisheries-peches/initiatives/fhgbp-ppsp/index-eng.html, Feb. 1, 2022, pp. 1-8. [cited by applicant]
Grace Period Disclosure, Anonymous, “From Policy documents to Interpretable and Executable Decision Models“ Envisioning a Human-AI Collaborative System”, 2022 Annual conference of the North American Chapter of the Assoc… [cited by applicant]
Haj et al., “The Semantic of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules: an Automatic Generation From Textual Statements”, IEEE Access, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org, vol. 9, 2021, pp. 56506-56522. [cited by applicant]
Hou., “Bridging Anaphora Resolution as Question Answering”, https://aclanthology.org/2020.acl-main.132/, 2020 Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Comp… [cited by applicant]
https://oecd-opsi.org/projects/rulesascode, “Cracking the code rulemaking for humans and machines”, OPAI,, Projects >Emerging Tech > Rules as Code (RaC), 2020, pp. 1-4. [cited by applicant]
https://paperswithcode.com/task/multi-label-text-classification, “Multi-Label Text Classification”, Methodology, Jan. 31, 2021, pp. 1-22. [cited by applicant]
https://support.bizzdesign.com/display/knowledge/DMN+modeling, DMN Modeling, Support, BiZZdesign Support, Feb. 1, 2022, pp. 1-2. [cited by applicant]
IBM, “Government health and human services solutions”, https://www.ibm.com/watson-health/government, Jan. 31, 2022, pp. 1-10. [cited by applicant]
IBM, “Social Program Management AI Program—Rules as Code”, https://w3.ibm.com/w3publisher/spm-ai-program/rules-as-code, Jan. 31, 2022, pp. 1-4. [cited by applicant]
Karadeniz et al., “Linking entities through an ontology using word embeddings and syntactic re-ranking”, https://bmcbioinformatics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12859-019-2678-8, BMC Bioinformatics, 2019, pp. 1-12. [cited by applicant]
Koshorek et al., “Text Segmentation as a Supervised Learning Task”, arXiv:1803.09337v1 [cs.CL], Mar. 25, 2018, pp. 1-5. [cited by applicant]
Lee et al., “End-to-end Neural Coreference Resolution”, https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.07045, arXiv:1707.07045v2 [cs.CL], Dec. 15, 2017, pp. 1-10. [cited by applicant]
Levin, “Modeling in Software Architecture”, University of Ottawa Site Technical Report TR, http://www.site.uottawa.ca, Feb. 2009, pp. 1-40. [cited by applicant]
Mell et al., “The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing”, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Special Publication 800-145, Sep. 2011, pp. 1-7. [cited by applicant]
Onggo et al., “Agent-Based Conceptual Model Representation Using BPMN”, Proceedings of the 2011 Winter Simulation Conference, 2011 IEEE, pp. 671-682. [cited by applicant]
Papay et al., “Constraining Linear-chain CRFs to Regular Languages”, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.07306v2.pdf, arXiv:2016.07306v2 [cs.CL], Jun. 15, 2021, pp. 1-14. [cited by applicant]
Philip et al., “Get out of your own way Unleashing productivity”, https://www2.deloitte.com/au/en/pages/building-lucky-country/articles/get-out-of-your-own-way.html, Deloitte BTLC#4, 2022, pp. 1-7. [cited by applicant]
Red Hat, “Chapter1. Decision Model and Notation (DMN)”, https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_decision_manage . . . , Jan. 28, 2022, pp. 1-35. [cited by applicant]
Reimers et al., “Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks”, https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.10084, arXiv:1908.10084vl [cs.CL], Aug. 27, 2019, pp. 1-11. [cited by applicant]
Suchenia, et al., “Towards UML Representation for BPMN DMN Models”, Matec Web of Conferences 252, 02007 (2019), CMES'18, https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201925202007, 2019, pp. 1-6. [cited by applicant]
Wang, et al., “Automated Concatenation of Embeddings for Structured Prediction”, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.05006v4.pdf, arXiv:2010.05006v4 [cs.CL] Jun. 1, 2021, pp. 1-18. [cited by applicant]
Wu et al., “Scalable Zero-shot Entity Linking with Dense Entity Retrieval”, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.03814.pdf, arXiv:1911.03814v3 [cs.CL], Sep. 29, 2020, pp. 1-11. [cited by applicant]