Exploiting Interchangeabilities for Case Adaptation

While there are many general methods for case retrieval, case adaptation usually requires problem-specific knowledge and it is still an open problem. In this paper we propose a general method for solving case adaptation problems for the large class of problems which can be formulated as Constraint Satisfaction Problems. This method is based on the concept of interchangeability between values in problem solutions. The method is able to determine how change propagates in a solution set and generate a minimal set of choices which need to be changed to adapt an existing solution to a new problem. The paper presents the proposed method, algorithms and test results for a resource allocation domain.