<p>An apparatus (300) for providing a control input signal (412) for an industrial process or technical system (400) having one or more controllable elements (421- 42n) is disclosed. The apparatus has means (320) for generating a semantic space for a text corpus (302), and means (330) for generating a norm from one or more reference words or texts (332), the or each reference word or text being associated with a defined respective value on a scale, and the norm being calculated as a reference point or set of reference points in the semantic space for the or each reference word or text with its associated respective scale value. Means (340) for reading at least one target word included in said text corpus is provided, as well as means (340) for predicting a value (350) of a variable associated with the target word based on the semantic space and the norm. There is also means (340) for providing the predicted value in a control input signal (412) to the industrial process or technical system (400). A method for predicting a value of a variable associated with a target word is also disclosed together with an associated system and computer readable medium.</p>
