21 - Knowledge Elicitation and Representation

Abstract

This chapter discusses knowledge elicitation and representation. Most pilots seek to maintain their aircraft within an operationally safe envelope. To accomplish this, they must successfully perform a number of tasks. These tasks all require that the pilot have some sort of internal representation of the environment. This representation must include both declarative knowledge such as facts and characteristics associated with aircraft and flight and procedural knowledge about how to use various systems and how to perform certain tasks. Knowledge elicitation is the term used to refer to any of the methods employed to gather data regarding what information people have about a particular system. This process generally elicits both procedural and declarative knowledge; the knowledge is elicited from a person or people who are defined as expert in the domain being studied. The techniques for eliciting this knowledge include both direct and indirect methods. Once the information that experts have about a system has been captured, a way must be found to characterize or represent that information. A number of cognitive structures have been proposed in the past few years to describe the content of people's declarative and procedural knowledge in a given domain.