Structuring techniques for knowledge-based planning systems in environmental impact assessment

Knowledge based systems may significantly reduce the complexity of a planning task like environmental impact assessment. But even then, such tasks will be performed by qualified personnel with special expertise. Thus, knowledge based planning systems for such applications not only have to incorporate expert knowledge, but have to act as advice-giving systems. They also have to cope with the tentative proceeding based on rough, incomplete knowledge, that is usual in planning tasks. Cooperating with the expert user knowledge based planning systems should supply intelligible explanation facilities and provide exhaustive information about the way possible solutions are found. Knowledge modelling on an appropriate level may contribute to reach this goal. The authors discuss different structuring techniques and their integration into a comprehensive model of environmental planning expertise. They outline three aspects of knowledge modelling concerning: the object level, a partition of the knowledge base with respect to contexts and the inference process