QUEST: Quality of Expert Systems

TNO Physics and Electronics laboratory, in collaboration with the University of Limburg and the Research Institute for Knowledge Systems, worked on a technology project named 'QUEST: Quality of Expert Systems' [FEL90]. QUEST was carried out under commision of the Dutch Ministry of Defence. A strong motivation for this research project is the fact that more and more conventional systems contain intelligent modules, without the assurance that these modules satisfy the same rigorous quality measures as the conventional ones do. In comparison with conventional software systems the quality of expert systems is viewed as being not very satisfactory. Some of the more problematical aspects are knowledge acquisition, testing, evaluation and the maintenance of the knowledgebase. As yet there is not much unanimity with regard to the ways in which these problems can be tackled. This is an objectionable state of affairs, especially when you are dealing with critical applications, e.g. process control systems in oil refineries or nuclear power plants. The same argument is also valid for military Command, Control, Communications and Intenliigence (C3I) systems. A characteristic of these systems is that they consist of large databases with which the deployment of men and material is coordinated