(An) expert system to guide decision structuring using influence diagram approach

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to construct a domain independent decision structuring expert system. This system is intended to replace the role of decision analyst, i.e., without decision analyst, decision maker(DM) structures the problem in decision tree form and analyzes by interaction with this system. To this end, this system exploits the generality and flexibility of rule based architecture. To be compatible with the way people encode knowledge about the problem, this system adopts a specific representation language for the desired formal decision model, i.e., influence diagram. Domain-independent general decision analytic knowledge is obtained from decision analysts and stored in production rule memory. This system acquires domain-specific knowledge from DM and inferences concurrently by firing an appropriate rules to replace decision analyst in searching DM``s own knowledge.