DESIGN OF A DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM USING EXPERT SYSTEM TECHNIQUES (ANALYSIS AND DEVELOPMENT, LIFE CYCLE, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, DESIGN)

Abstract

On the leading edge of computer applications are decision support systems (DSS) and expert systems (ES). Since these are new applications, there are uncertainties about how they should be designed. Currently, there are two dominant ways to design these systems. One way is favored by business people; the other way is supported by computer science people. The former approach, often associated with the DSS term, is the system analysis and design technique. In the latter approach, more often associated with the ES term, the technique of expert system or artificial intelligence is applied. Today, a strong tendency exists for DSS professionals to adopt the ES design format because of the emergence of advanced ES technologies in the 1980s. However, the ES approach still has many shortcomings which are substantial obstacles to overcome. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to find a combined, improved, and new approach which can be accepted by both business people and computer science people in designing a system. In other words, the intent is to design a decision support system by using expert system (ES) design techniques including: computer searching, computer reasoning, knowledge acquisition, and rule/knowledge representation techniques. The new method incorporates ES design techniques into different phases of the traditional development-life cycle. Seven phases--identification phase, conceptualization phase, formalization phase, system design phase, system development phase, testing/evaluation phase, and prototype revision phase--are the major components of this new method. A prototype example is given to support this new methodology. The purpose of the prototype example is a navigator-aid system which can help the captain dynamically change courses to meet unfavorable sea situations. Because the sea has many uncertainties and unpredictable variables, such as wind, wave, stream, and visibility, which constitute various combinations affecting the ship\u27s handling, the captain must make course-changes to offset unfavorable combinations of sea situations to keep crew, ship, and cargo safe. In general, in this paper system design is analyzed from two extremes (business approach and computer science approach) and a balance view (the new approach) is developed between these two. This is the first attempt to combine two different research areas, DSS and ES, to form a new, combined, and improved system design approach. The new method appears to satisfy some of the needs of both sides, and it also creates a new research area