Expert development tools

AUGUR-family expert NDE tools, developed in Russia, showed good capabilities of flaw sizing and characterization during on-site inspections at numerous Russian NPPs. 

The Research-Production Company (RPC) Zond (city of Ivano-Frankivsk) now is a well-known centre for development, fabrication and introduction of the technologies and methods of NOT of oil and gas equipment and tools Its experts developed and introduced the technologies and equipment which enables control of the drill pipes, especially their threaded joints, oil and gas equipment, sort out the pipes into groups by the strength and yield point of the pipes material, etc. 

General. We have studied the characterization of multicomponent materials by combining modem analytical instrumentation with a commercially available AI expert system development tool. Information generated from selected analytical databases may be accessed using TIMM, ( The Intelligent Machine Model, ) available from General Research Corp., McLean, VA. This Fortran expert system shell has enabled development of EXMAT, a heuristically-1inked network of expert systems for materials analysis. 

Limitations on data availability are a recurrent concern in discussions about uncertainty analysis and probabilistic methods, but arguably these methods are most needed when data are limited. More work is required to develop tools, methods, and guidance for dealing with limited datasets. Specific aspects that require attention are the treatment of sampling error in probability bounds analysis, and the use of qualitative information and expert judgment. 

The chapter is divided into a section on development of process cycles or plans and a section on in-process control. The tools to be discussed include design of experiments, expert systems, models, neural networks, and a variety of combinations of these techniques. The processes to be discussed include injection molding, resin transfer molding, autoclave curing, and prepreg manufacturing. The relative cost and difficulty of developing tools for these applications will be discussed where data is available. 

Finally, major FIPV chemical-related activities in Europe to utilize, or to monitor and learn from, include the development of the European Information System on Risks from chemicals released from consumer products/articles (EIS-ChemRisks). EIS-ChemRisks has been designed to be a European-wide expert and stakeholders network of networks to systematically exchange and assess information on risks from chemicals released from consumer products/articles. The overall objective is to develop tools and reference data to enable harmonized exposure assessment procedures in the European Union. These tools and reference data will support the development of a structured stakeholder dialog in the framework of the General Product Safety Directive (GPSD, 2001/ 95/EC) and progressively in the framework of the European Commission s REACH program as it is established and implemented. 

Chapter 3 provides a concise summary on technical design, programming paradigms, and development tools for expert systems. 

XpertRule is a series of Windows-based expert system development tools, which use genetic algorithms for optimization. 

These differences must be considered in choosing an approach for developing a new expert system and in selecting an expert system development tool. Forward chaining is preferred for identifying options while backward chaining is preferred for identifying whether specific options are viable. 

A secondary objective of this project is to explore the development of expert systems in a mainframe platform in the EPA network. Intelligent system components prototyped in the microcomputer could be implemented on a mainframe computer. This is an alternative to the expense of mainframe development that has deterred the implementation of expert systems for this platform at EPA. The relatively high cost of expert system development tools for mainframe computers could be obviated by transferring expert system shells developed by other Government agencies to the EPA. Some of the choices are CLIPS, developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and LES (Lockheed Expert System), developed by Lockheed within Department of Defense projects. 

The development platform is totally open. Specifically, both the ALEX and Small talk/V source code are available to the developer. This feature has allowed us to develop a number of in-house enhancements both to fine-tune ALEX as a development tool for POTW EXPERT, and to improve the performance of ALEX and Smalltalk/V in the PC/XT delivery environment. 

To meet these constraints, we chose for our development tool Insight 2+, a rule-based and microcomputer-based expert system shell that met most of the criteria of a good tool, as described by Waterman (2)—that is, it has good user interface, rule-tracing, and debugging capabilities. In addition, Insight 2+ has no requirements for licensing fees. 

After reviewing a number of AI languages and expert system development shells we chose one called KDS (40) for Knowledge Delivery Systems from the KDS Corp. in Wilmette, Illinois to serve as a development tool. The choice was based on consideration of price/performance, ability to run on a PC, ease of use and lastly -the developer, Barbara Wallace, consistently answered the phone and fielded our questions patiently and competently. In addition, the KDS product has seen a steady stream of improvements and enhancements which make it a very powerful tool for a very competitive price. It is written in Assembly language, which makes it fast and compact. 

The definition of this model will be used to design the best higher grade Knowledge Base structure. If this structure matchs with a commercial expert system developing tool characteristics, it can be selected and used allowing a minor effort to build the final system. 

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