A Model-based Approach to the Verification of Program Supervision Systems

This paper is concerned with the veri cation of knowledge-based systems for a task called program supervision (PS). Our aim is to highlight how the model on which a particular PS system is based in uences the properties that the knowledge base must ful l. Adopting this point of view allows us to go beyond veri cation techniques that do not exploit the intended use of the embodied knowledge. We distinguish the following elements in the speci cation of a knowledge-based system: task de nition, problem-solving method, and domain model. Our veri cation approach is based on the PS ontology and on the requirements that both the PS task and problem-solving method enforce on the domain knowledge of a speci c application. The de nition of the veri cation issues for the knowledge base is done in a way dependent both on the PS task and the particular PS problem solving method, but independently of the knowledge representation scheme or the speci c application. This work in the modelling and property determination for the PS task has as additional outcomes a categorisation of the properties and some guidelines to determine the adequacy of the expert's knowledge with respect to the requirements of the PS problem-solving method. We also intend to rely on this approach in our future work on the veri cation of the PS problem-solving methods.