A Hybrid of Rule and Frame Based Approach in Solving Hajj Complex Problems

Hajj is the fifth commandment in Islamic religion that is compulsory to all able bodied Muslims to perform at least once in their whole life. Hajj pilgrims must be well prepared before going to Mecca. They may face complex problems when preparing for and performing Hajj. In such situations they require experts' guidance. Accessing information from explicit and tacit knowledge from Hajj experts has some limitations in the aspects of availability, time and cost. Thus, it motivates us to propose a hybrid of rule and frame based knowledge representation approach to eliminate current drawbacks on using both methods separately. The main objective is to solve complex and layered problems with regards to Hajj rituals. The proposed Hajj knowledge base applies the hybrid approach due to several factors such as more structured, support large number of conditions and rules, support complex tasks, more flexible and easy to use. We implement the approach in a prototype. We conducted both lab experiment for comparative study and usability study to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The result shows that the hybrid approach never fails to solve problems given since this approach predetermine the problems and solutions before transforming the knowledge into the Hajj knowledge base. The knowledge becomes cases to be used in future reasoning. In addition, the approach reduces the time to solve a problem as compared to searching static information via the Internet.