NLG.L Regulatory News (NLG)

24 April 2014

Arria NLG plc

 ("Arria" or the "Company")

Arria to release new Data Science Framework software at co-hosted Pumps and Pipes event in Houston

Arria NLG plc (AIM: NLG), a leader in the development and deployment of Natural Language Generation ("NLG") technologies, announces it will co-host a special Data Science event in Houston on April 30, 2014, where Chief Scientist Professor Ehud Reiter will release novel Data Science Framework software that provides improved knowledge capture of subject matter expertise into artificial intelligence software. Pumps and Pipes, who are co-hosting the event with Arria, is a unique Houston-based technology interchange between the Oil and Gas, Medicine and Aerospace industries. The event will be attended by both oil and gas engineers and medical clinicians, the two professions that will be the first to benefit from the new software.

The Arria NLG Engine is a cutting-edge technology that works with big data sets and disparate structured data to generate natural language narratives that support faster and higher quality expert decision-making. Initial applications of the technology that are already live include an on-demand site-specific UK weather reporting service as well as oil and gas facilities surveillance in the Gulf of Mexico. Arria's new Data Science Framework enhances these solutions by allowing for easier connection to disparate big data sets, higher quality analytics, and faster knowledge capture of subject matter expertise into operational software.

Professor Reiter says Arria's Data Science Framework has arisen from requests from both engineers and doctors who want to fill the gap in the big data industry by streamlining the twin processes of capturing the knowledge of their subject matter experts and applying this knowledge to make sense of multiple data streams. "We hear the same message from Chief Petroleum Engineers in the Middle East as we do from cardiovascular surgeons in the USA: subject matter expertise is their most valued asset. So by reducing the time it takes to capture this expertise and the time it takes to make sense of the data, our new Data Science Framework speeds up the development of applications that automate insights and generate narratives, adding an unprecedented capability for faster and higher quality decision support."

Professor Reiter, who co-wrote the definitive book on building Natural Language Generation systems in the 1990s with his Arria colleague, Dr Robert Dale, says, "When you look at what else is out there in both medicine and oil and gas, the only significant contender we keep bumping up against is IBM Watson. But IBM Watson is a very expensive product that aims to provide a universal solution to the general problem of answering questions, whereas our goal is to help doctors and engineers make faster and higher quality decisions by giving them natural language explanations of what's going on. We go beyond answering questions to tell the stories that are hidden in the data."

Alan Lumsden, founder of Pumps and Pipes, Professor & Chairman Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Medical Director Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center at the Methodist Hospital in Houston, says "We are delighted to have Professor Reiter speaking at a Pumps and Pipes event where our motto is 'the solution to my problem is in someone else's toolkit'. I have had a look inside Arria's toolkit and I'm sure if our members can unlock the value hidden in our data the Arria way our industries will be transformed. Data Science is the new frontier and I'm convinced, one day we will look back and wonder how we ever functioned without natural language generation technology assisting our decision-making."

For further information, please visit www.arria.com or contact: