INTERACTIVE COMPUTER-GRAPHICS FOR EXPERT-SYSTEM VERIFICATION

This paper describes a portion of a research project to investigate th e potential application of expert systems for operations planning at M anitoba Hydro. The emphasis in this paper is on the verification and v alidation issues of an expert system for water-resources engineering. Verification during the research explored the use of interactive compu ter graphics and the cause-and-effect method of verification. The veri fication process is illustrated by a Manitoba Hydro case study, using an expert-system module to test the validity of a hydraulic network co nsisting of a system of hydroelectric generating stations produced by consultation with the Energy Management and Maintenance Analysis [expe rt system] (EMMAES). Issues in developing the representation scheme fo r an interactive user interface are discussed. Coupling of the compute r graphics with the expert-system module, and use of the cause-and-eff ect method for verification is addressed in detail. This combination p roved to be an efficient approach for verification of expert systems i n the water-resources domain.