Empirical Study on Knowledge Based Systems

Abstract

Knowledge‑based systems (KBSs) implement the heuristic human reasoning through specific techniques, procedures and mechanisms, in order to solve problems that do not have a traditional algorithmic solution. Research on this topic is being done in numerous organisations all over the world, from higher education laboratories to research institutes and software development organisations. 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 today as a research topic, or the interest in them actually faded. The study was also required for finding organisations currently building KBSs for different domains. The project's aim was to catalogue the software andor knowledge engineering methods employed by the listed organisations, in order to draw a comprehensive image (State‑of‑the‑ Practice) of the field. The current paper contains the results of this preliminary study only. A second research project re‑used the results of the preliminary study, 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. An attempt to map the identified applications of KBSs to different phases of knowledge management lifecycle is also presented.