The knowledge acquisition process in traditional knowledge engineering methods has been identified as the bottleneck in the development of expert systems. A system called the Interactive Domain Model (IDM) has been developed to automate the development of diagnostic expert systems. The IDM embodies meta-knowledge about the diagnosis of physical systems, such as buildings and machines, and views a particular model through a Graphical Abstract Domain Model (GADM). A GADM is a hierarchical model of the system composed of subassemblies and components. This model is utilized in a structured query of the expert for information about the system. This information is then used to automatically generate a knowledge base for a particular shell, thereby eliminating both the knowledge acquisition bottleneck and the manual interpretation of that knowledge into a knowledge base. This substantially reduces the amount of time necessary for the development of an expert system. Presently, research is being conducted to extend this concept to the realm of systems inspection and maintenance, to include both civil works and facilities, as well as quality assurance in construction. Long term goals include further extension into other areas of design, construction, and systems operation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.