. German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence GmbH
. German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence GmbH
The FLUIDS project aims to provide both a methodology and a general software environment for the design and development of intelligent user interfaces for real-time decision support systems.
This document identifies and discusses the user requirements that have to be addressed by the general framework and in the specific sample applications which will test the FLUIDS approach on two real-time traffic management systems currently operating in the cities of Madrid and Turin. For the identification of these requirements, the term 'user' is understood in a broad sense, comprising not only the end user of the application system, i.e. the operator, but also the software developer who will use the FLUIDS methodology and environment for building an intelligent human-computer interface.
The document is divided into five main chapters with additional details provided in the Annexes.
Chapter 1 aims to set the context for the FLUIDS work by setting out the need for intelligent interfaces to aid human decisions that are taken in real-time systems. It also outlines the approach taken to user requirements capture.
Chapter 2 introduces the central elements of the FLUIDS framework and provides the basis for the structured analysis of specific user requirements within the project's two case studies. An interface that provides satisfactory decision support should release the operator from a number of information and knowledge processing tasks, while leaving him/her sufficient freedom to evaluate and decide upon proposed decisions as well as the alternatives. The interface should contain a sophisticated decision support module offering access to explicit knowledge sources and flexible reasoning capabilities together with an interaction module employing advanced multimedia techniques, in order to provide the necessary effectiveness and adaptability for presenting information to the user. These two modules, both of which are based on existing technologies, are discussed at some length in the Chapter's two main subsections.
Chapters 3 and 4 describe the user requirements that have been captured for the TRYS and 5T traffic control systems. The two systems constitute the FLUIDS case studies and are described in more detail in Annex B and Annex C respectively. It has been decided to apply the FLUIDS approach to the TRYS system and to the Public Transport subsystem of 5T in order to develop a user interface for decision support. FLUIDS will be applied to the 5T subsystem for private traffic management for the purpose of improving monitoring by the operator; decisions are usually generated automatically by 5T, so decision support for this task would not be appropriate.
In general then, the analysis of user needs is perfomed from two different perspectives:
The Annexes contain the main figures, detailed descriptions of the TRYS and 5T systems, a description of KSM (the knowledge structuring environment that will be used for knowledge capturing in the project) and the Peer Review Report.
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