BaRT: A Bayesian Reasoning Tool for Knowledge Based Systems

Abstract

As the technology for building knowledge based systems has matured, important lessons have been learned about the relationship between the architec ture of a system and the nature of the problems it is intended to solve. We are implementing a knowledge engineering tool called BART that is designed with these lessons in mind. BART is a Bayesian reason ing tool that makes belief networks and other prob abilistic techniques available to knowledge engineers building classificatory problem solvers. BART has already been used to develop a decision aid for clas sifying ship images, and it is currently being used to manage uncertainty in systems concerned with analyzing intelligence reports. This paper discusses how state-of-the-art probabilistic methods fi t nat urally into a knowledge based approach to classifi catory problem solving, and describes the current capabilities of BART.