Expert systems approach to decision support

Abstract

An approach to building decision support systems based on expert systems methods is proposed. The relatively weak basic assumptions include only stationarity (repeatability) of the decision in the same environment (circumstances) and ordering of the values of all the attributes with regard to the decision maker's preferences. The proposed approach is aimed at reflecting the experienced domain expert's and decision maker's knowledge and preferences, both in the form of facts and rasoning rules. Among the purposes of the described class of decision support systems there are the storage and retrieval of the expert's knowledge and decisions, decision making support and ranking of admissible decision alternatives. A general model of the decision process is proposed and a language for representation of the expert's knowledge is introduced in brief. The structure, reasoning control, and an example of application of the proposed system are discussed and possible further extensions are pointed out.