Model Construction for Knowledge-Intensive Engineering Tasks

If such an analysis or synthesis question shall be answered automatically, both adequate algorithmic models along with the problem solving expertise of a human problem solver must be operationalized on a computer. Often, the construction of an adequate model turns out to be the key challenge when tackling the engineering task. Model construction—also known as model creation, model formation, model finding, or model building—is an artistic discipline that highly depends on the reasoning job in question. Model construction can be supported by means of a computer, and in this chapter we present a comprehensive view on model construction, characterize both existing and new paradigms, and give examples for the state of the art of the realization technology. Our contributions are as follows: