Knowledge Structure Manager Environment

KSM, the Knowledge Structure Manager) enviromment, supports the knowledge unit based approach for the formulation of structured knowledge models. This tool allows the construction, maintenance, as well as the operationalization of such models.

 

Figure 5: Basic Windows of the KSM Enviromment 

The main features of this enviromment are:

• A library of reusable knowledge representation components that can be associated to the primary knowledge units in order to enable the acquisition and validation of the domain knowledge in terms of multiple representation formalism, and to allow basic inference steps (the primary methods) over this knowledge. This set of representation primitives can be augmented as needed.
• A set of tools to build, inspect and update structured knowledge unit based models from a library.
• A mechanism to write the methods associated to the tasks of the non-primary knowledge units. This methods can be expressed within the LINK language.
• A mechanism to write the conceptual vocabularies shared between different primary knowledge units. The conceptual vocabularies are written in terms of the CONCEL language.
• Tools to manage the dynamic behaviour, i.e. execution, of the build models.

Figure 5 shows an overview of the KSM enviromment. The control panel at the top provides access to the different tools. It allows the inspection of the primitive representation library, the inspection of the library of generic models (models that can be specialized over different domains) and the library of domain models (models already specialized over a specific domain instance). At the generic as well as the domain level there are different graphical inspection tools that allow access to individual knowledge units.

 

Figure 6: Hyperbolic Browser for Knowledge Structures 

KSM includes (1) a hierarchy browser to visualize a knowledge unit hierarchy and the decomposition into distinct knowledge areas, (2) a similar browser for visualizing the task hierarchy associated to a given task of a knowledge unit, and (3) a so-called hyperbolic browser (see Fig. 6) that allows the complete visualization of large knowledge unit hierarchies in an hyperbolic geometry.

 

Figure 7: The Model Execution Monitoring Tool 

In addition to tools for inspecting the different knowledge components of the model the KSM enviromment also makes it possible to execute the models and to monitor their dynamics. Figure 7 displays a screen hardcopy of the tool used to monitor the dynamic behaviour of the build up structured knowledge models.