由於數位化資訊量膨脹迅速，為協助知識需求者可快速且正確地理解與吸收其所需知識與資訊，有效之知識表達方式已成為現今資訊提供者必須著眼探討之主題。而傳統之知識分享環境中，對於抽象化時間知識而言，文字型知識表達方式亦難以讓讀者於短時間內精確掌握重要之時間資訊及其代表之時間關聯性。因此，若能藉由視覺化呈現方式表達對應之文字型時間知識，將可有效提升知識需求者對時間知識內容之釐清與吸收效率。故本研究即針對時間相關知識提出一套「時間知識視覺化」方法論，以使電腦系統可將文字型時間知識內容自動轉化為對應之視覺化圖形。
於時間知識視覺化方法論中，本研究乃規劃將文字型知識文件之內容經由時間知識解析程序後，取得其所隱含之重要時間資訊與事件內容；之後，再依據時間相關資訊對各事件進行時序判斷與視覺化圖示呈現，以達時間知識視覺化之核心目的。本方法論之詳細作法可分為「全文標記」、「時序判斷」與「時間知識視覺化」等三大主軸。首先，於「全文標記」程序中，藉由詞彙截斷與標記之方式萃取文字型知識文件內容中所含時間相關資訊，並以之為基礎建立目標文句集合及產生相關事件內容；之後，於「時序判斷」程序中，將時間相關資訊與事件之排列情形和時序判斷法則庫之法則進行比對，以將各事件依正確時序關係重新彙整；最後，於「時間知識視覺化」程序中，將時間相關資訊與事件內容彙整存入制式化資料矩陣中，再與圖形資料庫進行視覺化圖示資料比對，並以圖形之表達方式將時間知識予以視覺化呈現。本研究除發展模式與方法論外，並依此方法論建構一套「時間知識視覺化資訊分享」系統以進行案例驗證，從而確認方法論與技術之可行性。
整體而言，本研究提出之時間知識視覺化方法論將可有效改善知識需求者理解與吸收時間知識之效率，並可延伸應用於業界，以進行教育訓練與知識管理等活動。

In order to help the knowledge receivers to efficiently and accurately understand the useful knowledge and information from a large number of digital documents, knowledge representation mechanism has become an important issue that the content providers should concern. In the traditional knowledge sharing environment, the abstract temporal knowledge such as temporal information or temporal relations of events is hard to be fully recognized by knowledge receivers in a short time based on the text-oriented knowledge representation scheme. Therefore, a visual representation scheme for the text-based temporal knowledge will support knowledge receivers to efficiently recognize this type of knowledge.
The core idea of this research is to extract and tag the temporal terms from text-oriented documents via temporal knowledge analysis procedure. As a result, the temporal relations of events can be derived from the temporal information and the corresponding visualized display of temporal knowledge can also be established according to the temporal information and events. This research develops a methodology for temporal knowledge visualization so that computer systems can automatically convert the text-oriented temporal knowledge into visualized display. A three-phase methodology (including full-text tagging, temporal relations analysis and temporal knowledge visualization) for temporal information extraction, temporal relations analysis and temporal concepts visualization is developed. In addition to the proposed methodology, a Web-based prototype system is developed to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed model and technique.
As a whole, this research provides an effective visualization methodology for the knowledge users to improve efficiency for temporal knowledge recognition. The methodology can be further applied in many enterprise activities such as e-training or knowledge management to enhance reuse of temporal knowledge.

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