IntelliGIS: Tool for Representing and Reasoning Spatial Knowledge

This paper presents a method for the representation and reasoning of spatial knowledge. Spatial knowledge is important to decision making in many transportation applications that involve human judgment and understanding of the spatial nature of the transportation infrastructure. Unfortunately, conventional Knowledge-Based Expert Systems (KBESs) do not have a robust spatial inference engine to construct spatial knowledge and deduce solutions. The method discussed in the paper integrated a KBES with geographic information system (GIS) functions using Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol and Remote Procedure Calling technologies. A software system (called IntelliGIS) implementing the method has been developed. As a case study, a KBES-based pavement management system was developed using the IntelliGIS. The case study demonstrated how IntelliGIS represents and reasons about spatial knowledge and how it provides graphical display capabilities for representing spatial information and derived solutions.