Development of knowledge-based systems in wind engineering

An overview of basic concepts and techniques necessary to develop expert systems is presented. The knowledge elicitation process and knowledge representation schemes are discussed. We demonstrate that knowledge-based systems can offer intelligent assistance to designers and planners in accomplishing a wide spectrum of tasks requiring wind engineering expertise. We present an example of an expert system under development. Specifically, object-oriented and rule-based representations are used to encode knowledge about the serviceability of high-rise buildings. The resulting prototype expert system assists structural engineers in the preliminary design of building by eliminating those design that would be unsuitable based on human comfort criteria. We conclude that expert systems can be used to effectively advance the state-of-the-art in wind engineering.