The maritime casualties cause serious consequences such as loss of life, property and maritime pollution. Therefore, the large-scaled casualties will be derived from loss of structural strength and stability due to the progressive flooding and enlargement of damage by the effect of wave and wind. The improvement of damage survivability is very important in maritime safety. In this paper, the knowledge-based system which could improve the safety level of stability and longitudinal strength through posture control of a damaged ship is studied. The system has been incorporated to interface with user to develop an 'operationally practical' action list based on ballasting to improve the ship's structural safety and stability status.

Knowledge-based system for safety control of damaged ship

Through the rapidly ongoing process of electronic encapsulation of information and knowledge, a new kind of space opens up in hydraulics between the places and ways in which information and knowledge are produced, through research, and the places and ways in which these are applied, through engineering and management practice. It is this space that is now being occupied by hydroinformatics. The special problems of presenting hydroinformatics arc introduced in relation to the types of electronic knowledge encapsulators that are currently being brought together and integrated in real-time-control, alarm-handling, computer-aided design, computer- aided management and other systems. The new challenges that hydroinformatics presents are outlined and related to the contributions to this special edition of the Journal of Hydraulics Research.The distinction between information and knowledge and the most immediate consequences of this distinction are set out in an appendix to this introductory paper.

Hydroinformatics: A Copernican revolution in hydraulics

Model-based evaluation of nitrogen removal in a tannery wastewater treatment plant

: The purpose of this research is to study the injection of an intelligent agent into modern user interface technology. This agent is intended to manage the complex interactions between the software system and the user, thus making the complexities transparent to the user. The background study will show that while interesting and promising research exists in the domain of intelligent interface agents, very little research has been published that indicates true success in representing the uncertainty involved in predicting user intent. The interface agent architecture presented in this thesis will offer one solution for solving the problem using a newly developed Bayesian-based agent called the Intelligent Interface Agent (IIA). The proof of concept of this architecture has been implemented in an actual expert system, and this thesis presents the results of the implementation. The conclusions of this thesis will show the viability of this new agent architecture, as well as promising future research in examination of cognitive models, development of an intelligent interface agent interaction language, expansion of meta-level interface learning, and refinement of the PESKI user interface.

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA320728.pdf

Utilizing Bayesian Techniques for User Interface Intelligence

The investment in mutual funds has steadily increased in this decade. This growth has created a need for comprehensive and expandable financial decision support systems (DSS) that embody the knowledge of an expert in making investment decisions. This study illustrates the design and development of an intelligent, object-oriented decision support system: MFS -–Mutual Fund Selector. MFS takes into account an investor’s unique requirements and personal characteristics, and recommends an investment strategy.

Mutual Funds Selector­ An Intelligent Object-Oriented Decision Environment

Research institutes and universities have developed many programs which have been used up until now mainly by specialists. The input preparation, the interpretation of the output, and the use of the program are often too complicated to be suitable for a wider group of users. A part of the knowledge necessary for the use of a scientific program can be included in a user interface. The development of such user interfaces is a mixture of the development of an expert system and a normal user interface. The impact of the new user interface on the changing user task has to be taken into account in the development process.

H. J. van Zuylen

Papers

From scientific computation to decision support