Verification of completeness and consistency in knowledge-based systems : A design theory

Sammanfattning:

Verification of knowledge-bases is a critical step to ensure the quality of a knowledge-based system. The success of these systems depends heavily on how qualitative the knowledge is. Manual verification is however cumbersome and error prone, especially for large knowledge-bases.

This thesis provides a design theory, based upon the suggested framework by Gregor and Jones (2007). The theory proposes a general design of automated verification tools, which have the abilities of verifying heuristic knowledge in rule-based systems utilizing certainty factors. Included is a verification of completeness and consistency technique customized to this class of knowledge-based systems.

The design theory is instantiated in a real-world verification tool development project at Uppsala University. Considerable attention is given to the design and implementation of this artifact – uncovering issues and considerations involved in the development process.

For the knowledge management practitioner, this thesis offers guidance and recommendations for automated verification tool development projects. For the IS research community, the thesis contributes with extensions of existing design theory, and reveals some of the complexity involved with verification of a specific rule-based system utilizing certainty factors.