Artificial Intelligence Modelling of Complex Systems

Applied Artificial Intelligence

1990

Self Cite

is involved in a very large number of programs, covering a wide range of scopes in the area of building. including technical, legal. social, and economic topics. The actions carried out encompass scientific research or technical missions. engineering. writing regulations. or state-of-the-art documents. such as unified codes ofpractice or assessment of the social impact of new technologies, and the need to facilitate access to this huge amount ofdata has become a considerable challenge. Information in such a case is a very generic term covering a vague understanding in that it can include basic data representing a primary corpus or, at the other end of the scale, sophisticated services offered by experts able to solve complex problems. Customers for such information have very different needs but agree on the necessity to facilitate access to the relevant data and to various high-value services accounted for by computer systems. As the semantic level of the services differs considerably, the need became apparent to merge different tools within an integrated software environment to satisfy the previous objective. The main components to be assembled are retrieval systems to locate the relevant data. objectoriented databases to offer a reusable storage model. hypertext and hyperobject systems to browse the content of hypermedia entities, and multifunctional expert systems to provide sophisticated computer systems with an adaptable entry and behavior.

Section: Future Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrated Access to Information Systems

Applied Artificial Intelligence

1990

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“…Cooperation between expert systems can obey different frameworks, ranging from very traditional ones such as the blackboard model of control 137, 55, 56, 19, 201 to specific models including event-or task-oriented systems [62,67,691. Events can be processed by specialized knowledge bases and tasks can be distributed among dedicated expert modules, and entities can even be cross-referenced over expert systems.…”

Section: Expert System Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A lot of work remains to be done to design a generalized cooperation mechanism for an integrated environment, but we emphasize the necessity of relying both on homogeneous distributed data and on reflective systems to ensure easy development of powerful functions in that respect. Future work will address generalized data exchanges and generic cooperation policies for multifunctional and multimode systems (i.e., system control switchable between task-oriented, event-oriented, process-oriented, and transaction-oriented) [62,671. Such work will represent natural extensions of the current environment.…”

Section: Microcomput€rs In Civil Engineeringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Artificial Intelligence Software Engineering in Building Engineering

Computer aided Civil Eng

Dubois

Delcambre

1990

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is article provides a review of two main re-F search projects carried out at the French Scientific and Technical Center for Building (CSTB) in the area of artificial intelligence applied to building engineering. We first describe the software engineering techniques used to develop the computer envirmments. Then we present the architecture of an advanced multiservice computer system offering capabilities comprising retrieval facilities, hypertext editing of documents (e.g., unified codes of practice, regulations), object-oriented database management, and multifunctional expert systems. Finally we discuss a major multiactor computeraided design project aiming to provide a framework able to combine the sundry contributions of the various actors involved in the building design process.The expected results of such projects are a panel of complementary capabilities either aiming at satisfying multiservice requirements for an isolated designer or at providing a single but cooperative and computer-assisted process to different actors. Of course, merging the respective capabilities of these tools is a very promising perspective.Al SOFTWARE ENGINEERING IN BUILDING ENGINEERING 169 1. Abstract and concrete objects. 2. The slot structure implemented as a Lisp object describing the slot properties. 3. Values selected according to their related slot type, from a set of authorized Lisp objects accounting for their type diversity (i.e., a specialized value structure for each slot type selected among integer, real, string, symbol, object, any).Abstract objects implement in some way the class concept of the object-oriented languages, modeling static concepts or static knowledge descriptions. Concrete objects refer to the instances processed by inference mechanisms. Moreover, abstract models are given the interesting structural property of representing complex networks of intertwined subobjects making it possible to connect, from any given slot of type object belonging to any abstract object, a network of related abstract subobjects linked to one another at a structural level. The original point comes from the fact that the structural network is implicit when describing the object structure and automatically generated at the time the object (and subobjects) are created. This property makes it possible to describe very complex entities, involving many subobjects as their components, and to browse later through the related structural network.Moreover, instances can be generated from these complex abstract models, reproducing their structures at the finest level, thus generating subinstances for sub-voL. 5, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 1990 A1 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING IN BUILDING ENGINEERING 173

Expert Systems and Documentary Dataases Integration

Debras

Computer aided Civil Eng

Brisson

1991

The CSTB has been involved for many years in the process of a better availability and better use of building regulations. The FARTEC project has provided a significant breakthrough in that direction, thus offering a digitized corpus and its software environment, facilitating the retrieval and the handling of technical and legal texts. A related research efort, referred to as the ACSIS project, aims at devising advanced software environments where building standards represent the basis of intelligent softwares, moreover including a wide range of functions such as technical control, automated selection of manufactured products, assisted designs, etc. The ACSIS system offers various access modes to the corpus (indexation, graphical access, local dictionaries) available for different data types (text, images, arrays, formula, etc.), and associates this primary information to intelligent softwares (waterproofing expert adviser, anti‐seismic design controller, accessibility project checker for disabled people, etc). Sophisticated dynamic indexation processes are offered to enable the user an eficient selection of the documents given a set of nomenclatures evolving according to the current user context. Moreover, each one of the high added value applications connected to the corpus is able to make an appropriate use of the building standards stored in the SGML primary corpus. Given a set of Document Type Definitions (DTD), the object‐oriented document model and the hyperobject networks for each document of the SGML database are created: this stage is known as the compiling of the corpus. Then, given a set of formatting directives (e.g. indentation, justification, ere.>, and of presentation requirements (e.g. fonts, etc.), labelling each DTD structural entity (e.g. article, title, paragraph, etc.), the visual display of the documents is produced. Finally, the documentary database is linked to the intelligent softwares, thus offering a crossvalorization of the expert knowledge, illustrating, on one hand, the foundations of the expert rules and, on the other hand, the appropriate operational use of the regulation.