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1. INTRODUCTION

1.1. MANAGEMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES

Management of natural resources embraces a whole range of subjects pertaining to both the concept of good management as well as to "natural resources." The management part suggests elements of control, decision-making, execution of actions including both intervention and monitoring, as well as elements such as guidance and protection. Resolute and efficient decision-making is often associated with good management. This in turn is dependent on both knowledge and data related to aspects that influence what is to be managed.

Much of our life is dependent on our ability to enjoy and harvest from what the earth can supply. Fish, game, minerals, water, sunlight, wood, and a diversity of herbs and plants provide us with food, drink, shelter and protection, heat and chill, light and shade. They appeal to our esthetic and emotional senses. Most of them constitute elements in an ecological balance that we are both directly and indirectly dependent on. Man has since his first day used his wit to develop skills for exploiting these resources for his own benefit. At the beginning there were simple ways and tools of bone and rock for fishing, hunting, and gathering. Tools for making fire came next. Eventually, bronze replaced stone and bone and weapons became more sophisticated. As Man learned to mine and create new aids for living, he paid increasing attention to the resource issue. His extended intellect gave rise to new ideas about what to use, how to build, and where to explore. All his new needs and sophisticated manners imposed a greater demand for control of the resources. Mineral resources implied wealth and power. Today the world's nations maintain policies that are modern versions of the survival doctrine practiced by the first Man. They will go to extremes in order to secure known resources of oil. They are painfully aware of their vulnerability with respect to the scarcity of hydrocarbons. This scramble for control has often tipped management into mismanagement. Over the past few decades, Man has learned a new lesson. Natural resources are finite. Extensive exploitation might lead to severe ecological imbalance and ruin the foundation for not only Man, but all life. His modern lifestyle encourages activities that hurt the earth and ruin vulnerable resources such as water, wildlife, fish, etc. through pollution and contamination. Management of resources no longer involves purely selfish goals. Nature and the needs of the whole environment require attention. Good management implies fulfilling a conjunction of many apparently contradictory goals. In order to meet these ends, management of our natural resources has become one of the most critical issues that Man has ever been challenged with. The question is no longer only "how to find and how to get?", but just as much as "how to dispose and how to replace?" In his usual way, Man is looking for new aids in order to help him cope with the challenge. Expert systems (ES) are one of them. ES were invented to assist human decision-making. They are meant for knowledge-intensive tasks that require expertise.

1.2. EXPERT SYSTEMS

Expert systems for management of natural resources date back to the origin of the expert system era itself. When reading the history of expert systems, it is hard to miss references to work like Prospector (Duda 78) applied for mineral exploration. Many early students of LISP studied the examples printed in Winston's book (Winston 81) on the programming language. Through this they were also introduced to ideas on how to build rule-based systems directed toward wildlife taxonomy.

According to a recent estimate reported by Durkin (Durkin 96), approximately 12,500 systems have been built over the years. Most of these systems are assumed to have been developed for business, medicine, and manufacturing. Less than 10% is assumed to serve purposes with the heading "Management of mineral resources." Yet, works on many of these systems stand out as pioneering efforts within the field of expert systems, and AI in general. According to Durkin, approximately 50% of the systems surveyed were built between 1990 and 1992. There was a predominance of systems treating diagnosis-type of problems. Durkin explains this observation with the fact that diagnosis is an activity that most experts deal with. Diagnostic systems are relatively easy to develop and pose less risk to an organization wishing to pioneer the ES potential. Looking at expert systems for management of natural resources alone, we will find contours of the same pattern. During the early years the problems addressed were limited to interpretation and diagnosis kinds of tasks. The scope was highly constrained and focused on a single mineral or an isolated subject. Later, focus was extended to handle more of the management issues. The latest efforts address the whole planet and its diversity in terms of resources. They include several problem-solving strategies beyond diagnosis and seek to fuse input from different types of expertise. At the start, the oil industry became a driving force. The main concern was how to find more oil. Systems for log analysis and geological interpretation were the first to receive operational status. For a decade, the work in R&D departments at Schlumberger, Elf, Arco, and Exxon dominated the scene. Later, significant results related to resources such as forestry and ecology were published. Today, the variety in initiatives is very broad, both in terms of the technology applied and the domain of concern.


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