Knowledge-based support systems for uncertain complex tasks

The computer-based support of conceptual and procedural reasoning and of data manipulation is the central theme of this paper. The human conceptual mode of reasoning is supported by a computer-based thesaurus of concepts, and the procedural mode by a hierarchically organised set of specialists operated on by an inference engine. Support for data manipulation is provided by giving the user access to a set of functions for generating models and determining their behaviour. The resulting computer-based system is termed a knowledge-based support system (KBSS), rather than an expert system, because the authors emphasise the need for the computer to support the human´s powerful reasoning methods. A KBSS has been developed in the domain of control engineering and is available commercially from Oxford Computer Consultants