Reference: Tommelein, I. D.; Levitt, R. E.; & Hayes-Roth, B. Using Expert Systems for the Layout of Temporary Facilities on Construction Sites. E.&F.N. Spon, London, 1987.
Abstract: We develop an expert system to assist project managers in laying out temporary facilities on a construction site. During construction of a project, various temporary facilities are located and removed from the site. Determining their location is a spatial arrangement problem dealing with positioning objects under constraints. We approach this problem by implementing layout design knowledge with a blackboard expert system shell, BB1, which opportunistically applies varying problem solving strategies to construct the layout incrementally. "Frames" representing the facilities to be located contain geometrical and temporal attributes; binary spatial and temporal constraints express relationships between them. This representation requires explicit data about objects and constraints, so knowledge acquisition is a major part of our research work. The BB1 shell has been tested with a simple prototype, and we are currently implementing a realistic project.