Description:
Prudence analysis (PA) is a relatively new, practical and highly innovative approach to solving the problem of brittleness in knowledge based systems (KBS). PA is essentially an online validation approach, where as each situation or case is presented to the KBS for inferencing the result is simultaneously validated. This paper introduces a new approach to PA that analyses the structure of knowledge rather than the comparing cases with archived situations. This new approach is positively compared against earlier systems for PA, strongly indicating the viability of the approach.
Description:
Traditionally Expert Systems (ES) require a full analysis of the business problem by a Knowledge Engineer (KE) to develop a solution. This inherently makes ES technology very expensive and beyond the affordability of the majority of Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) and Non-Profit Organisations (NPOs). Therefore, SMEs and NPOs tend to only have access to off-the-shelf solutions to generic problems, which rarely meet the full extent of an organisation’s requirements. One existing methodological stream of research, Ripple-Down Rules (RDR) goes some of the way to being suitable to SMEs and NPOs as it removes the need for a knowledge engineer. This group of methodologies provide an environment where a company can develop large knowledge based systems themselves, specifically tailored to the company’s individual situation. These methods, however, require constant supervision by the expert during development, which is still a significant burden on the organisation. This paper discusses an extension to an RDR method, known as Rated MCRDR (RM) and a feature called prudence analysis. This enhanced methodology to ES development is particularly well suited to the development of ES in restricted environments such as SMEs and NPOs.
Description:
Traditionally Expert Systems (ES) require a full analysis of the business problem by a Knowledge Engineer (KE) to develop a solution. This inherently makes ES technology very expensive and beyond the affordability of the majority of Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) and Non-Profit Organisations (NPOs). Therefore, SMEs and NPOs tend to only have access to off-the-shelf solutions to generic problems, which rarely meet the full extent of an organisation’s requirements. One existing methodological stream of research, Ripple-Down Rules (RDR) goes some of the way to being suitable to SMEs and NPOs as it removes the need for a knowledge engineer. This group of methodologies provide an environment where a company can develop large knowledge based systems themselves, specifically tailored to the company’s individual situation. These methods, however, require constant supervision by the expert during development, which is still a significant burden on the organisation. This paper discusses an extension to an RDR method, known as Rated MCRDR (RM) and a feature called prudence analysis. This enhanced methodology to ES development is particularly well suited to the development of ES in restricted environments such as SMEs and NPOs.