An expert system for field inspection of concrete dams: Part 2, artificial intelligence issues

Abstract

The preliminary development and final description of the engineering knowledge and reasoning pertaining to an expert system to assist during the field inspection of existing concrete gravity dams have been described in Refs. [1] and [2]. The purpose of this paper is to describe the artificial intelligence (AI) issues that were raised during the construction of the expert system. The first part of the paper deals with techniques used to identify the engineering knowledge, using heuristic classification and/or construction as in the expert system approach and causal and/or teleological reasoning as in the qualitative physics approach. The second part of the paper covers specific issues related to knowledge acquisition. The last part addresses various issues of knowledge representation as they are directly relevant to this expert system. Examples relative to AI concepts have been presented in Ref. [2].