A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR DISTRIBUTED EXPERT SYSTEM USE IN TIME SENSITIVE HIERARCHICAL CONTROL
Jacqueline Henningsen · Lincoln (University of Nebraska) · 1987
There are many problems faced by decision makers involved in complex, time sensitive hierarchical control systems. These may include maintaining knowledge of the functional status of the system components, forecasting the impact of past and future events, transferring information to a distant or poorly connected location, changing the requirements for an operation according to resources available, or creating a independent course of action when system connectivity falls. These problems are transdisciplinary in nature, so decision makers in a variety of organizations face them. This research develops a framework for the use of distributed expert systems in support of time sensitive hierarchical control systems. Attention is focused on determining ways to enhance the likelihood that a system will remain functional during a crisis in which one or more of the system nodes fail. Options in the use of distributed expert systems for this purpose are developed following investigation of related research in the areas of cooperative and distributed systems. A prototype under development of a generic system model called DES (distributed expert systems) is described. DES is a "trimular" form of support structure, where a trimule is defined to be a combination of a human decision agent, a component system model and an expert system. This concept is an extension of the domular theory of Tenney and Sandell (1981).