Eliciting Knowledge and Transferring It Effectively to a Knowledge-Based System

The knowledge acquisition bottleneck impeding the development of expert systems is being alleviated by the development of computer-based knowledge acquisition tools. These work directly with experts to elicit knowledge, and structure it appropriately to operate as a decision support tool within an expert system. However, the elicitation of expert knowledge and its effective transfer to a useful knowledge-based system is complex and involves a diversity of activities. This paper illustrates the complete development of a decision support system using knowledge acquisition tools. The example is simple enough to be completely analyzed but exhibits enough real-world characteristics to give significant insights into the processes and problems of knowledge engineering.