Architecture and development environment of a knowledge-based monitor that facilitate incremental knowledge-base development

Being able to incrementally define and test knowledge bases for intelligent systems is desirable. However, as more knowledge is added, the knowledge engineer must ensure that unwanted interactions between the existing and additional knowledge do not occur. One knowledge-based monitoring system, Hazard Monitor (HM), provides the ability to add knowledge incrementally. HM's architecture includes tailorable components that allow the knowledge engineer to eliminate unwanted knowledge interactions. HM also includes knowledge-base development tools to facilitate initial and incremental knowledge-base development. This paper describes HM's architecture and knowledge structures plus its knowledge-base development tools that facilitate the knowledge engineering process. To illustrate the benefits of the architecture, we present aviation examples based on our implemented prototypes.