Web intelligence for measuring emerging economic trends: the drone industry

In order to reap the benefits of the data revolution and to complement traditional statistical methods and sources with innovative approaches, Eurostat recently established the Trusted Smart Statistics initiative. This also encompasses the so-called Web Intelligence Hub. In the context of the Web Intelligence Hub, Eurostat initiated experimental research towards extending the capabilities of retrieving information on European drone businesses from the internet. The ‘Web Intelligence for Drones’ initiative builds on previous research into web scraping of business
information in the context of official statistics. The study was triggered by the absence of consolidated data on drones, the operation of drones or market size in the EU, despite the EU having one of the most advanced regulations on unmanned aircrafts in the world. In particular, research focusses on the development of a methodology and of the tools needed to retrieve information from the World Wide Web (www) concerning businesses based in EU countries that have their main
activity in the civil drones sector. This scientific summary presents the chain-like methodology and the tools developed to identify drone companies through the www and to extract company-relevant information from their websites. The method was developed with a perspective of generalisation in mind (across countries and
across economic sectors) wherever possible. It has already been fully applied to three European countries (Spain, Italy and Ireland)