The use of knowledge management in the management of tunnels and tunnel projects

摘要

This paper discusses a new approach for computer-assisted tunnel design. Computer science uses ontologies since the mid-90s, but experience on expert systems and various computing tools in geotechnics teach that blunt use of such tools is somewhat hazardous. The main reason for this stands in the peculiarities of geotechnics, characterized mainly by fuzz-iness, hard-to-reproduce situations and a priori unknown (and exhaustively unknowable, as today) object of study: underground space. This state of affairs leads to human expertise as the sole way to manage things in the domain, rather implicitly and informally, which is just what computers cannot really do. To cope with this difficulty, and to add computer-managed data and logical capabilities to human expertise, a specific knowledge-based system should be designed. This is what the RAMCESH Project, led by Solem France S.A. with collaboration of CETU (French centre for tunnel studies) should allow. The RAMCESH Project features an informal on-line ontology, flexible and usable by domain experts, based on simple computer tools and implemented by any geotechnical community on the basis of one ontology for one community. This ontology is the way to store and retrieve declarative knowledge, as it is enriched with simple semantics (by means of conceptual relations). This knowledge is then used in the granule of knowledge, which allow to represent the ontological concepts in a contextual way, i.e. in a situation extracted from domain documentation, complete with its implications. Granules and ontology can be used for a variety of applications, from establishing analogies between cases to verification of norms application in one case.