A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1992

Problems faced by the expert system developers in construction field, during development and application were investigated. Some of these problems were identified as unique to the construction field and others as common to any field of application. Out of these problems, Knowledge Acquisition, Treatment of Uncertainties and Validation and Verification of expert systems were selected for the study. Presently available techniques to handle these problems were surveyed, and the use of these techniques in the expert systems developed for construction field was investigated. Effective use of these techniques for various applications were identified. The applicability of Delphi technique in knowledge acquisition, as a solution to the above problems, was investigated, and was identified as a practical way of solving above problems. A user satisfaction and acceptability survey was conducted on the expert system ESSEX. These user acceptability surveys were identified as a tool to detect the claiity of questions, problems in user friendliness etc. Findings from the literature review, conclusions drawn from the study and recommendations for further research were stated.