An Intelligent Tool for SASO Knowledge Acquisition Without Knowledge Engineers

"We propose to develop an innovative software tool that will permit military analysts to rapidly create SASO gaming systems customized for specific missions without the assistance of a knowledge engineer or programmer. Developing such a tool represents asignificant challenge; thus, we suggest an integrated approach drawing upon a broad range of AI techniques. An intelligent visual knowledge editor will guide the user through the knowledge acquisition process. Automated planning techniques will allow thesystem to collaborate with the user, drawing upon its built-in knowledge engineering expertise to help extract the relevant information from the user. To leverage the experience of past planners, a case-based reasoner will maintain a case-base ofpreviously encoded domain knowledge from which it can dynamically retrieve and adapt elements to fit the current mission context. In addition, a model validation module will constantly check the acquired knowledge for incomplete or inconsistent areas, anda collection of rule-based "smart wizards" will proactively aid the user with difficult tasks. The system will also include a scenario generator that can automatically translate mission domain knowledge into wargaming scenarios. We will absolutelydemonstrate the feasibility of our ideas through the development of a Phase I prototype. The proposed system can be marketed as a tool for building entity-based simulations for non-scientific dom