The main purpose of this work is to analyze research trends using conference information. Through the analysis of the data, the study aims to identify topic-specific cities, the trend of global concentration in research and obtain significant information about the connection between cities. To properly perform the goals, meaningful parameters have been calculated and afterward, a geographical visualization of the results has been performed. The study is divided into three parts. The aim of the first part is to identify the degree of specialization of every city in the different research trends defining a topic vector using LDA. In the second part of the study, a similarity analysis is performed, obtaining compelling information about the connection between cities, and hence provides significant results as similar cities often share common interests, needs or services. Afterwards, a network analysis is performed and centrality measures are calculated. The third part consists of a temporal distribution of topics. In that way, it is possible to see how a specific topicevolves in time, which is essential to predict the direction of global innovative activities. Finally, an empirical study with European data is performed to show the usefulness of the proposed approach.

Outgoing