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Abstract:
Knowledge-based systems (KBS)
implement the heuristic human reasoning through specific techniques,
procedures and mechanisms, in order to solve problems that don’t have a
traditional algorithmic solution. Research on this topic is being done
in numerous organisations all over the world, from higher education
laboratories to professional research companies and businesses. In the
last ten years, there was much less attention given to Knowledge Based
Systems than in the decade before. Are Knowledge Based Systems just
another fad? We tried to prove that research and practice in this
direction continues, even if under the name of Knowledge Based Systems
different schools understand very different things.
A first research project,
aimed at gathering information about the State-of-the-Practice in
building knowledge-based systems with practical applications, needed a
preliminary study to ascertain if KBSs still exist as a research topic.
The study was also required for identifying organisations currently
building KBSs for different domains. The project’s aim was to catalogue
the software and/or knowledge engineering methods employed by the listed
organisations, in order to draw a comprehensive image of the field. The
first three sections of the current paper contain the results of this
preliminary study.
A second research project
re-used these results, focusing on the study of KBSs successful
implementations as a basis for building a method that would allow
practitioners to choose the most appropriate KM tools for each
organisation’s specific problems and situations. A trigger for this
second project was the interest in studying the causes of KBSs rejection
by the end-users. A first attempt to map the identified applications of
KBSs to different phases of knowledge management lifecycle is presented
in the fourth section.
Keywords:
knowledge-based systems, taxonomy, success, failure, knowledge
management tools |
