Identifying potential technology opportunities for coal bed methane exploitation via patent analysis

To find the unexplored technology opportunities and indicate the potential breakthroughs for the technology development of coal bed methane (CBM) exploitation, this study proposes an automated identification approach by combining the patent classification codes and generative topographic mapping (GTM) based on patent analysis. The experimental findings reveal that the proposed model outperforms nine traditional link prediction benchmarks in identifying 15 vacant technologies. This automated identification approach not only saves R&D time to discover vacant technologies for CBM exploitation but also generates actionable policy insights for governments and enterprises to optimize strategic resource allocation and foster cross-sector innovation.