EXPERT-SYSTEMS IN SOLID-WASTE MANAGEMENT

Artificial intelligence, and expert systems in particular, are an exci ting and relatively new application of computers. They provide new opp ortunities for harnessing the scarce and often scattered pieces of val uable knowledge and experience in solid waste management which at pres ent is in the possession of the privileged few. While conventional alg orithmic programming replaced much of the sophisticated and repetitive analytical work of the solid waste practitioner, expert systems are p oised to take over the no-less important tasks of the ill-structured a nd less-deterministic parts of the planning, design and management pro cesses. Endeavours in other branches of engineering to utilise this ne w computing technology indicate that solid waste expertise in various forms has a tremendous potential to be encoded successfully in expert systems. This state-of-the-art review presents a background of expert systems technology followed by guidelines to its successful implementa tion in the solid waste management domain.