The development of an expert system for seismic loading

Abstract

This paper describes the development of Seismic, a system to assist structural designers to check their evolving designs against the seismic loading requirements of the Draft New Zealand Standard for structural design and design loadings, DZ4203:1986. The paper focusses on a description of methodologies found useful in the course of developing the system; in particular, techniques for initial project assessment, knowledge acquisition, and knowledge representation.

Keywords:

• code-of-practice
• knowledged-based system
• expert system
• seismic loadings
• knowledge acquisition
• knowledge representation