Knowledge-Based Systems

Alfonso Hernndez Medrano

Abstract - Knowledge Management is an effective way that organizations could take advantage to improve their performance and develop their intellectual assets, in order to reinforce their organizational learning abilities, remembering that main goal of such systems is focused into facilitate knowledge flow and knowledge sharing from expert people (persons who know) to persons who need to know. So, the purpose of this work is to make a brief exploration and to describe, briefly, uses and trends of knowledge-based systems. Index Terms Artificial Knowledge-based Systems, Management, Neural Networks. Intelligence, Knowledge

INTRODUCTION Nowadays, it is known that a system that is integrated with a knowledge base and an inference engine could be considered as a knowledge-based system; therefore, as Forzyth states in his book Expert Systems principles and case studies, there are four essential components: knowledge base, knowledge-acquisition module, inference engine, explanation interface. In fact, expert systems are considered as a derivation from knowledge-based systems, since they utilizes human expert knowledge that is acquired into a computer with the purpose of getting, storing and sharing this expertise, as well as knowledge extracted from databases or obtained from external sources, in a way that it could be used by noexpert people. Knowledge-based Systems use knowledge structuring techniques, such as predicate logic, production rules, hierarchically structured tools, semantic nets, and frames; taking advantage of the Object-Oriented Programming, OOP, knowledge-based systems present better characteristics on

extendibility, reusability or reduced code size. The evolution of DSS technology and its amalgamation with many other technologies such as knowledge-based techniques, objectoriented systems, intelligent agents, neural networks, genetic algorithms, as well as data warehousing and web-based technology, has led to the emergence of many sophisticated knowledge-based systems and modeling environments. As Malhotra defines, . . . Knowledge management systems engineering seeks model management solution to challenging problems involving the manipulation of complex metadata artifacts, or models, such as database schemas, ontologies, interface specifications, or workflow definitions, and mappings between models, such as SQL views, XSL transformations, or ontology articulations . . . the use of Object Oriented Programming facilitates the development of extremely flexible knowledge-based systems that support intelligent interface, domainindependent modeling knowledge management, reusable and integrated modeling knowledge sharing, informationbased meta-modeling methodology. [8]. In his work, this author refer that he had to use the MetaSimMod (a knowledge-based decision support system (KBDSS) to store meta-models in a flexible manufacturing environment. According to above mentioned, among different applications of knowledge-based systems, it is possible to find applications such as diagnosis, planning, design, monitoring and control of processes, training and consultation services; so, expert systems that focusing onto support organizational making decisions are equipped with components denominated knowledge-based management subsystems, as Turban and Aronson mention in their book "Decision Support Systems and Intelligent Systems"; in fact, this kind of expert systems are known as

knowledge-based decision support systems. In the same way, systems that manage knowledge use several Artificial Intelligence methods and tools, such as neural Networks, intelligent agents or fuzzy logic, in order to carry out activities related with knowledge identification, knowledge engineering, tacitto-explicit knowledge transfer, and so on. Thus, figure 1 shows a schematic diagram of a Knowledge-Based Decision Support System.

Fig. 1 )

Schematic diagram of the KBDSS environment. (copied from Meta-modeling framework: A new approach to manage meta-modelbase and modeling knowledge, by Maholtra).

Richards (2003), in her article Knowledge-Based System Explanation: The Ripple-Down Rules Alternative, states that explanation is important for knowledgebased systems as it satisfies user's necessities to decide whether to accept or reject a recommendation; since it is not possible to know what goes on inside an expert's head, there is no way for accurately capturing thought process and reason in the same way. So, using browsing tools to explore knowledge in different views, the what-if' analysis for case values and the display of rules and traces in a number of alternative formats give users control, linked to greater satisfaction and acceptance [8]. SOME APPLICATIONS Knowledge Management (KM) which was initiated after World War II and reinforced at the end of the last Century, is characterized by focusing on intangible assets and knowledge value generation, known as intellectual capital, and to taking advantage of utilities (mainly on information and

communication technologies): also, it is recognized as one of the main factors for knowledge-based systems; for that reason, this kind of systems are in growing application in all organizational sectors (such as governmental, industrial, educational, and so on) in order to facilitate their decision makings. As Groot, ten Teije and van Harmelen (2005), based on the idea of degradation studies, by means of a study supported in a 5hypothesis demonstration, argued for the ability of KBSs to deal with missing or invalid data is an essential dimension of KBS validation and the need for quantitative analysis of the quality of KBSs, in their article A quantitative analysis of the robustness of knowledge-based systems through degradation studies; then, they conclude that many other aspects could still be uncovered using further degradation studies [3]. Among all characteristics that identify knowledge-based systems, it is possible to mention that these systems support their performances over quality and quantity from specific domain knowledge rather than techniques to solve problems; nonetheless, these systems provide useful applications when it is needed to solve very complex problems, such as the necessity now-called cooperative problem solving that is referred to several heterogeneous agents which are loosely connected and potentially could cooperate to solve problems that require their combined expertise and resources 1 (even if there is not an adequate model), mostly, when organizations need to acquire and preserve specific expert knowledge, in order to sharing with no-expert workers, including its ability to explain reasoning process applied into resolution problems. Knowledge-based systems utilize languages of general purpose, such as Pascal, C, C++ and so on, as well as languages of major level, such as LISP and PROLOG,
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As Stephen T. C. Wong states in his article COSMO: A Communication Scheme for Cooperative Knowledge-based Systems, communication is a critical component for cooperative problem solving systems, in order to address heterogeneous agents, and knowledge interchange, and localized control, and organizational structure, since cooperative work will be conducted in many ways among a network of agents.

derived from Artificial Intelligence 2 ; likewise, as knowledge-based systems maintain operative interactions with other systems, in a such way that, eventually, they need information imported from other systems or, on the contrary, results from knowledge-based systems could be exported to other systems, in order to be treated by them. In their article An expert system using an extended ANDOR graph, Lee, Cho and Kim (2006) purpose an expert system, called IMIXAO (Integer-Matrix-driven Inference based on an eXtended ANDOR graph), with an integer-matrix-driven inference engine based on an extended ANDOR graph framework and, in the text of their work, they referred that T.A. Sedbrook, in his work A collaborative fuzzy expert system for the Web, Data Base for Advances in Information Systems content that the integration of Internet and fuzzy-logic technologies can provide an opportunity for experts and end users to collaborate in developing, refining, and testing knowledge-based systems on the Web. On the other hand, they referred, also, that seeking to reduce the amount of data requested, in order to reach a conclusion and explains how a particular conclusion is reached, A.Z. Ghalwash, in his work A recency IE for connectionist knowledge bases used knowledge-based neural networks as an inference engine, which seeks to reduce the amount of data requested Thus, in an enunciative but not limitative way, next, some applications that are possible to find in real world are showed.

homogenizing and clarify specialized information, including that needed for training, evaluation and/or explaining of decisions making. Based into a business trip approval process, at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Lee, Kim and Park, in their article KWM: Knowledge-based Workflow Model for Agile Organization, proposed a knowledge-based approach for workflow modeling 3 ; such that, a workflow is defined as a set of business routes, rules that are addressed in the artificial intelligence field, mapped between roles and actors, in which routs represent task sequences, roles indicate who is responsible for a task, and business rules that allow to define conditional or exceptional routings and conditional assignments of tasks for the actors through the role [6]. Then, every rule in the procedural-rule set Rp is represented as the following wff; TS (x, C) CP1 CPn TS (y; I) where the predicate TS means the task states, CPi is the condition predicate specified in the condition slot meanwhile the constant terms C and I represent completed and initiated. Likewise, the rule frames constrain their activation time using the state of entities or relationships in the CONDITION slot; moreover, they considered three types of predicates: (1) dependencies between entity frames, (2) dependency between the rule frames and (3) dependencies between entity frames and rule frames. Finally, the authors conclude that Knowledge Workflow Management is useful because it was proven as a useful framework to implement fully automated workflow and to agile organizations that frequently change their business processes under turbulent organizational environments. On the other hand, Malhotra (2006) refer that models are considered an important organizational resource and presents a framework for meta-modeling of knowledge, as well as the design and development of

A.

MANAGEMENT

In order to improve strategic, tactic or operative processes, these systems are advocated in retrieving, driving and sharing information stored in databases needed to: minimizing or reducing operation costs, offering improvement in planning, coordination and control of complex activities,
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LISP, mainly used lists but recently it has been complemented to use objects; on the other hand, PROLOG, is a declarative language that include an inference engine to make queries into the base of facts.

These authors considered a workflow as a set of interrelated tasks which processes inputs and produces outputs.

MetaSimModel 4 (a knowledge-based decision support environment to organize, manage, use, and reuse modeling knowledge of simulation models in a flexible manufacturing environment) in his article Meta-modeling framework: A new approach to manage meta-modelbase and modeling knowledge, supported in the idea over the use of meta-models (models that store knowledge about other models) and using objects as basic building blocks for create and represent modelbase (in form of meta objects), as well as the pertinent knowledge (for create meta objects) in the knowledgebase. Likewise, he use UML (Unified Modeling Language) and objects to couple with database management systems, those which act as an intelligent front-end.

B. CONSULTANCY This activity, that include disciplines such as medicine, jurisprudence, engineering, and so on, is supported by knowledge-based systems because, besides they facilitate organizations to utilize and control growing volumes of information, also, they allow organizational workers to: access information from experts, consultants or external sources, model or simulate situations, problems or systems, interpret or explain legal dispositions, elaborate reports, as well as updating operative information. Brzillon and Brzillon, using modeling car drivers behaviors, in the article ContextSensitive Decision Support Systems in Road Safety, state the lack of explicit context representation as one of the reasons for failures of many knowledge-based systems; so, they propose contextual graphs for uniform representation of elements of reasoning and contextual elements at the at the level of the links between contextualized elements of reasoning, that are organized in graphs in the spirit of a nest of dolls, with no
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hierarchy, as a factor of knowledge activation. Also, they consider that the contextual elements considered in a contextual graph constitute a heterogeneous population that is difficult to represent in a hierarchy or ontology, such that an activity is a sub-graph identified by actors as a recurring structure appearing in several contextual graphs, likewise; they perceived proceduralized contexts as chunks of contextual knowledge that allow people choice an action to execute. Besides, they refer that a contextual element may itself be a contextual knowledge piece (where more-basic contextual elements intervene) and consider that the first step towards an attempt to rationalize the decision-making process since, as they conclude, the contextual graphs could facilitate representing good or bad practices, as a tool for identify and propose rational ways to improve human behaviors [2]. On the other hand, in their work entitled Self-associated concept mapping for representation, elicitation and inference of knowledge (2006), realized through a case study in a consultancy business, Wang et al present a self-associated concept mapping (SACM) in which they extend the use of mapping concept by proposing the idea of self-construction and automatic problem solving to traditional concept maps, in order to give the idea of concept maps with selfconstruction ability and automatic problemsolving ability.

MetaSimMod is an intelligent knowledge-based decision support environment, composed of four modules: a database management system (DBMS), a modelbase management system (MBMS), a knowledgebase management system (KBMS), and an end-user interface.

Fig. 2 ) An example of Sel-Associated Concept Mapping (copied from the article mentioned above)

Thus, to enhance and extend the capability of Knowledge-based systems, a Constrained Fuzzy Spreading Activation (CFSA) model is incorporated in the SACM, in order to enable decision supporting function for providing rapid and automatic decisions. It is known that many researches applied concept maps on knowledge management as a knowledge management tool so that concepts can be captured and queried, as well as connections among knowledge elements could be discovered, so that is shown in figure 2. An elicitation algorithm which embedded with fuzzy set is presented to provide an automatic solution for the construction and dynamic update of SACM from data, without human intervention; also, an inference algorithm of SACM which embedded with fuzzy set is built for quantitative predication. The results were compared with a casebased reasoning (CBR) model and human laymen of the consultancy business, getting that the knowledge inference of SACM has advantages of higher laymen learning capability, smaller data size and faster speed than the case-based reasoning model, which could be useful for simulating human learning activities.

C. PRODUCTION In order to improve activities related with production and manufacturing processes, such as machinery operation, quality control, stock inventories, and so on, knowledgebased systems sustain organizational performances by means of: optimizing control and coordination of processes, as well as updating, communicating and distributing operative procedures, forecasting objectives, goals or results related with the production, including complex processes. Establishing that the developed knowledge-based system was split up into four phases, this is, the simulator preprocessing phase, the placement phase, the refining phase and the conversion phase, in the article Optimization of Automated HighSpeed Modular Placement Machines Using Knowledge-Based Systems, Csaszar et al, present a project conducted with the purpose

to optimize an automated modular, highspeed, multistation, walking-beam chip mounter, which had a single head and a single nozzle per station, in order to minimize the pulse rate (i.e. time elapsed between the completion of two consecutive boards) and the number of feeder mechanisms required; so they utilize four knowledge-based systems [3]. In this project, the authors used a knowledge-based system written in C Language Integrated Production System (CLIPS) which was developed by NASA and the user executed scripts to setup the knowledge-based system. As the authors state, several factors determine the cycle time of these placement machines: (1) the components order to placed, (2) sequencing and allocation of components to the feeder carriage, and (3) the allocation of components to the feeder carriage; for that reason, they created four expert systems with different objective functions, in order to compare results, using vendors software as a baseline for testing. Following a general description of the machine, the authors formulated the optimization problem and addressed approaches, in order to represent and implement the optimizer, resulting that the expert system with the best performance achieve a reduction average of 16.14% in feeder usage and a reduction average of 3.38% in the pulse rate; also, the results shown differences in solution quality by using different cost functions. So, they conclude that using the knowledge-based system in conjunction with the simulator, factory engineers were able to produce results that increased production in a considerable way and decreased feeder slot usage, corresponding to the theoretical results presented by these authors in the article mentioned above. In a similar way, they consider that: the system could be modified to run different expert systems and use the results of the one that produced the best pulse rate, which could be analogous to having different human experts with different ideas to solve a problem. the refinement phase in the rules set was limited to a minimum operation moves, to save run time, but the

factory engineers could redo the rules to encourage more movement of components between the stations, in order to consolidate light parts to earlier stations, the factory engineers could implement a swapping routine, allowing swap operations, between stations and within each station, a routine could be written to swap parts within a station, in order to most placed parts could be set up closer to the center of the feeder carriage, enhancements of the tool described in their article, toward its integration into a Web-based system could be implemented. Related with the field of the biochemical industry, Rgis, Doncescu and Desachy
propose a non-model based method of physiological state identification, based on segmentation of bioreactor sensors signals, in the article called Detection and characterization

of physiological states in bioprocesses based on Hlder exponent, in which the underlying of the method is supported on the detection of signals singularities by the Maximum of Modulus of Wavelets Transform 5 and the characterization by the Hlder exponent evaluation, meanwhile, the physiological states characterization is based on the correlation product between biochemical signals. Since results were confirmed by experts in microbiology, the authors induce that the method could help to automatically control and optimize the bioprocess.

As Sun and Li state in their article Data mining method for listed companies financial distress prediction, due to the uncertainty of business environment and strong competition, even companies with perfect operation mechanism have the possibility of business failure and financial bankrupt; for that reason, financial distress prediction is important to both listed companies and investors. So, in this article, these authors refer that their empirical experiment involved 35 financial ratios and 135 pairs of listed companies, as initial samples and mention, also, that recent studies have demonstrated that artificial intelligence, such as neural networks, can be an alternative method for financial distress prediction; moreover, they see neural networks as a black-box whose structure weight values are the hidden knowledge for classification, which is difficult for ordinary investors and finance majors to understand. However, with the development of information technology, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, data mining appears and grows, in order to support deep researchers to deepen on reliable methods for financial distress prediction, because data mining dynamically mine out valuable hidden knowledge, which could be applied to predict listed companies financial distress. Under this context, the authors used data obtained from China Stock Market and Accounting Research Database (CSMAR), establishing that data mining for listed companies financial distress prediction needs the steps shown in figure 3.
Create data set

D. FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT Maybe one of the most demanding applications is involved with the financial world, because of the importance and complexity of this process, related with bank loans, financial accounting or auditing, stock exchange, and so on; under this context, it is necessary to hold intelligent tools that allow organizations to plan, control and evaluate the different and complex existent systems, as well as the operations and financial affectations derived from this process.
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Data preprocessing

Construction of decision tree model

Accuracy evaluation

Wavelet transform is a powerful tool for nonstationary signal analysis, due to its good localization in time and frequency domains

Classification and prediction

Fig. 3) Data mining steps of financial distress prediction.

According to 2000-2005 data, 135 pairs of companies listed in Shenzhen Stock Exchange and Shanghai Stock Exchange were selected as initial sample companies. After applying the data mining, the decision tree model for listed companies financial distress prediction was formed and then, it was pruned, until the cross-validation error reached the minimum value, as is shown in the figure 4.

they could control and evaluate their virtual environments. In the article Mining web logs to improve hit ratios of prefetching and caching, Huang and Hsu (2006) present a develop to access sequence miner to mine popular surfing 2-sequences with conditional probabilities from the proxy log, and stored them in the rule table, such that, according to buffer contents and a rule table, a predictionbased buffer manager also developed would make appropriate actions such as document caching, document prefetching, and even cache/prefetch buffer size, adjusting to achieve better buffer utilization [6]. In this article, the authors, designed a predictionbased proxy server used to improve hit ratios of accessed documents, the architecture of which consists of three functional components such as a log file filter, an access sequence miner, and a prediction-based buffer manager, as it is shown in figure 5.

Fig. 4) Decision tree model for listed companies financial distress prediction (copied from the Sunand-Lis article, mentioned in this section).

Finally, these authors conclude that the combination of attribute-oriented induction (AOI) and attribute relativity analysis based on information gain (IG) in data mining, the decision tree can overcome lack of dynamic learning ability and the difficulty to understand, in order to effectively predict listed companies financial distress.

Fig. 5 ) Architecture of a prediction-based proxy server (copied from the Huang and Hsu article, mentioned in this section)

D. USERS BEHAVIOR Nowadays, people often get different types of information and entertainments from the Internet; so, in a similar way as above mentioned, activities related with the use of Internet, such as entertainment, publicity, sales, and so on, knowledge-based systems support organizations with efficient and adequate tools to know, evaluate, and update information related with their market niches and the browsing preferences or users behavior when they are connected. Likewise, organizations could evaluate and control their programs related with assistance or customer services, moreover,

Using data mining techniques, meaningful information could be extracted from the log file to help system designers to analyze user access behaviors; since not all information recorded in the log file is needed or useful in the mining process, a log file filter is used to clean the irrelevant records and fields in the log file. The prediction-based buffer manager makes appropriate actions such as document caching, document prefetching, and buffersize adjusting, according to buffer contents and the rule table. Authors report that through the simulation, they found that their approach had better performance than other ones in

quantitative measures, such as hit ratios and byte hit ratios of accessed documents. E. POWER SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATION In the article Knowledge-Based Systems as Operational Aids in Power System Restoration, Matsumoto et al [1992], already analyzed the background of power system restoration and discuss how the use of knowledge-based systems could benefits such processes, as well as their discussion about graphic interface; arguing that, although it could be effective for the recognition problem, it could take much effort to develop, but they proposed that a way to improve this issue were to separate the human interface from the knowledge base, both in software and hardware configurations, thinking that separated user interface could be reused for other applications [3]. On the other hand, Teo, C. Y., and Shen, W. [2000], based on disturbances in North America, present in their article Development of an Interactive Rule-Based System for Bulk Power System Restoration a rule-based system to generate and implement a dynamic restoration plan covering from total blackout up to complete restoration in a bulk power system [5]. Likewise, Bretas and Phadke [2003], by means of a multilayered perceptron (conformed by several layers of processing units that compute a nonlinear function of the internal product of the weighted input patterns) which was trained with a supervised learning algorithm, called back-propagation, they discuss in respect to some limitations encountered in power systems restoration techniques, in order to proposed improvements supported by artificial neural networks (ANNs) that were trained with a back-propagation learning algorithm and they tested 1,230 patterns on a 162-bus transmission and 17-generator system, and compared with a breadth search restoration scheme; concluding that use ANN in power system, for real-time applications, then restoration should be considered for real-time applications [1].

KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEMS TRENDS Mora et al, in the article A Strategic Descriptive Review of the Intelligent Decision-making Support Systems Research: the 19802004 Period, in a 2-period study (from 1980 to 1989 and from 1990 to 2004, they assess capabilities and limitations of the intelligent decisions making systems concept, identifying three dimensions as core structural components: (1) the user-interface capability dimension (UICD), (2) the data, information and knowledge-representation capability dimension (DIKCD), and (3) the processing-capability dimension (PCD), defining that the first and second dimensions are based on the general and standard structure for a DMSS, as well as the third dimension based on the types of decisions tasks, and levels of the intelligence embedded in algorithms, and the types of intelligent operations for intelligent datamining systems. Moreover, they specify that Decisionmaking Support Systems include Decision Support Systems (DSS), Executive Information Systems (EIS), Expert Systems (ES) and Knowledge-based systems (KBS), as well as other autonomous systems. Among their conclusions, they stated that machine learning, through neural networks, genetic algorithms and Data-mining seemed to have few applications, even though Artificial Intelligence had show effective contributions to the decision-making process; however, their results suggested that the efforts hadnt been cumulative and isolated. Nowadays, Globalizations pressure obliges organizations to be alert and take care for their competitiveness, because of the constant changes that it involves; so, management and adequate handling of information turned into fundamental aspect, because of the implicit necessity to stay (or to survive). Thanks to Artificial Intelligences contribution, it is considered that knowledgebased systems could reason as an expert man, following the same, or even more, better steps as the expert could develop to solve a specific problem. Thus, taking advantage of the technological advances, it is a common experience to use personal computers (such as PCs or Macintosh) or workstations, instead of specific machines (such as LISP

machines), in order to get an integration of systems. Likewise, among all the possible ways for knowledge-based systems, many researchers are working in aspects such as inductive or deductive learning, mining text, neural networks, case-based reasoning (including Bayesian networks), artificial vision, natural learning comprehension and genetic algorithms, as well as Ontologies (in order to represent knowledge) and fuzzy data mining (to getting knowledge from complex databases), even more, on Intelligent Agents (to retrieve knowledge from web networks). CONCLUSIONS Globalization of markets has provoked that knowledge-based systems affront a transcendental transformation, supported by Artificial Intelligence, which provide users a set of robust tools to get and describe metadata contents and their applications, as well as facilitate the formal integration and retrieval of those data, in order to facilitate an adequate use of expertise or specific knowledge. Nowadays, that people is involved in virtual societies, those which demand interchange and sharing knowledge, thanks to the technological advances it is possible to get methodologies, techniques, models and robust tools that facilitate integration of information and knowledge into data repositories which could support strategic decisions making, even more, to deepen into more advanced researchers into fields corresponding to superior levels, such as fuzzy logic, data mining, neural and Bayesian networks, computational vision, and so on, as well as to continue former researching and developments in disciplines such as medicine, engineering, accounting, and so on. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author of this work presents his acknowledgement and gratefulness to CONACYT because the scholarship she has granted with the number 16841 and the file 215363; likewise, the author thanks to SIP-

IPN the scholarship granted by means of the project 20082201. REFERENCES [1] Bretas, A. and Phadke, A. G., 2003, Artificial Neural Networks in Power System Restoration, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, Vol. 18, N. 4, pp 1181-1186, October 2003, [2] Brzillon, P., and Brzillon, J., ContextSensitive Decision Support Systems in Road Safety, of the ACC project, PREDIT-France and the French Minister of Transportation Chapter 4, [3] Csaszar, P. et al, 2000, Optimization of Automated High-Speed Modular Placement Machines Using KnowledgeBased, EEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Part C: Applications and Reviews, Vol. 30, No. 4, November 2000, [4] Forzyth, R., Expert Systems principles and case studies, 1989, Chapman and Hall Computing Series, New Jersey, [5] Groot, P., ten Teije, A., van Harmelen, F., A quantitative analysis of the robustness of knowledge-based systems through degradation studies, SpringerVerlag London Ltd., Knowledge and Information Systems, pp 1-22, 2005
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Alfonso Hernandez Medrano, at the present moment, is a Doctoring in the Superior School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, National Polytechnic Institute. He has a 22-year experience in microwave and power line carrier telecommunication systems, besides his experience on telecommunication and electrical project management. Also, he has led implementation and certification of quality, and environmental, as well as health and occupational security systems in public sector, specifically in Federal Commission of Electricity of Mexico.

visited in October 2008, [14] Sun, J. and Li, H., Data mining method for listed companies financial distress prediction, 2008, School of Business Administration, Zhejiang Normal University, China, Knowledge-Based Systems, pp 1-5, December 2006, www.sciencedirect.com, visited in October 2008, [15] Teo, C. Y. and Shen, W., Development of an Interactive Rule-Based System for Bulk Power System Restoration, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Vol. 15, N. 2, pp 646-653, May 2000, [16] Turban E. y Aronson J.E., 2001, Decision Support Systems and Intelligent Systems, Prentice Hall, Inc., New Jersey, [17] Wang, W.M. et al, 2006, Self-associated concept mapping for representation, elicitation and inference of knowledge, www.elsevier.com/locate/knosys, visited in October 2008,