Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
11
Expert Systems for Planning
and Spatial Decision Support
Demetris Demetriou, Linda See and John Stillwell
CONTENTS
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... 259
11.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 260
11.2 Conventional Systems versus ES .......................................................................................... 261
11.3 When to Use an ES ............................................................................................................... 262
11.4 Basic Components of an ES.................................................................................................. 262
11.5 Building an Expert System ...................................................................................................264
11.5.1 System Design ..........................................................................................................264
11.5.2 System Development ................................................................................................ 265
11.5.3 System Evaluation ..................................................................................................... 266
11.6 Relationship between ES and Decision Support Systems .................................................... 266
11.7 Integration of GIS with ES ................................................................................................... 267
11.8 Prototype ES for Land Redistribution .................................................................................. 271
11.9 Future Directions .................................................................................................................. 275
References ...................................................................................................................................... 276
ABSTRACT
Expert systems (ES) are a well-established technology for capturing expert knowledge and emu-
lating decision-making, stemming from early research in artificial intelligence. ES represent one
of many approaches in GeoComputation (GC) for solving ill-structured or semi-structured prob-
lems, of which there are many examples in the geospatial domain. This chapter provides a his-
torical and technical overview of ES development including when ES are appropriate methods to
use and what tools are available for their creation. Spatial ES are then considered in more detail,
focussing on their integration with geographic information systems (GIS), and an example is pro-
vided which was developed to support the process of planning for land consolidation. Here, the
ES is one component of a larger integrated planning support system that generates alternative land
redistribution plans under a range of potential scenarios. Using an actual land consolidation proj-
ect in Cyprus as a case study, the results demonstrate that the ES performs very well in relation
to a solution generated manually by land consolidation experts while taking only a fraction of the
time required. Yet while ES technology is becoming more widely used to solve geospatial prob-
lems as reported in the literature, there is still a long way to go before they can be used in more
operational settings such as in local or regional planning offices. Two further requirements are the
need for a user-friendly and efficient ES shell for integrating GIS with ES for any spatial problem
domain and further development of the ES technology itself in terms of knowledge acquisition,
representation and self-learning.
259
