text: Reducing a Knowledge-Base Search Space When Data Are Missing - Tech Briefs
  This software addresses the problem of how to efficiently execute a knowledge base in the presence of missing data. Computationally, this is an exponentially expensive operation that without heuristics generates a search space of 1 + 2n possible scenarios, where n is the number of rules in the knowledge base. Even for a knowledge base of the most modest size, say 16 rules, it would produce 65,537 possible scenarios. The purpose of this software is to reduce the complexity of this operation to a more manageable size. The problem that this system solves is to develop an automated approach that can reason in the presence of missing data. This is a meta-reasoning capability that repeatedly calls a diagnostic engine/model to provide prognoses and prognosis tracking. In the big picture, the scenario generator takes as its input the current state of a system, including probabilistic information from Data Forecasting. Using model-based reasoning techniques, it returns an ordered list of fault scenarios that could be generated from the current state, i.e., the plausible future failure modes of the system as it presently stands. The scenario generator models a Potential Fault Scenario (PFS) as a black box, the input of which is a set of states tagged with priorities and the output of which is one or more potential fault scenarios tagged by a confidence factor. The results from the system are used by a model-based diagnostician to predict the future health of the monitored system.
  This program was written by Mark James of Caltech for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For more information, download the Technical Support Package (free white paper) at www.techbriefs.com/tsp under the Software category.
  This software is available for commercial licensing. Please contact Karina Edmonds of the California Institute of Technology at (626) 395-2322. Refer to NPO-42818.
  Analysis methodologies Computer software and hardware Event data recorders Failure analysis Failure modes and effects analysis Software