Case-Based Reasoning in a Travel Medicine Application - Computational Intelligence in Healthcare: Advanced Methodologies - page 185

Fig. 1. 4R Cycle from the Travel Medical Point of View
cases or vocabulary to recognize keywords. The so called knowledge containers
are described in more detail by Richter [5].
The background knowledge is required to find similar cases during the retrieval
process and if necessary adapt solutions. After the retrieval process has been ex-
ecuted a CBR system has an ordered set of possible solutions, which usually do
not match perfectly. Hence they need some modification and the reuse process
is initiated. Within this process the system uses background knowledge, mostly
adaptation rules, to change the solution in order to exactly (or as close as possi-
ble) fit to the problem description. In our example we can exchange the month
April through March because the background knowledge, i.e. a rule, says that
both months are in the rainy season and though can be handled equally. Also
we can substitute Flores through Alor and Bali because this are all Indonesian
islands with very similar properties (geographical location, climate, etc.).
Figure 2 exemplifies one type of knowledge representation for geographic re-
gions. Based on continents, regions and countries we have developed a taxonomy
that can be used to find similar countries. Knowledge models like taxonomies or
light ontologies provide different types of knowledge in terms of knowledge con-
tainers: the names of the nodes and leafs are representing vocabulary knowledge .
Since those terms are ordered in a taxonomy, similarities between countries, here
regarding their geographic position. Also adaptation knowledge can be acquired