Abstract Keywords Introduction - IT in Civil Engineering. Aalborg ...

FROM PAPER TO HYPERSPACE. REPRESENTING AND HANDLING KNOWLEDGEIN AN INTERACTIVE MEDIA ENVIRONMENTAbstractThe systems we are formulating today may provide us withdramatically better communication tools as communication rooms,personal "telescreens", and virtual realities. Behind thesystem interfaces dwell more and more capable knowledgerepresentations which are closely related to pertinent searchstrategies. What are the implications of the mutual influencebetween user demands and information technology? What will theproperties and impact be of the next generations informationhandling system? It is now possible to create models whichbring about a clearer and more obvious connection between theapplications, our intentions and the computer stored models. Aswe mix knowledge representations which more or less formalizethe models we create of our reality we can provide the userswith specified views and tools on different levels ofabstraction and degree of formalization. We must formulate andtry out new concepts. New tools for building and using the nextgeneration systems have been defined, created and tested at theKBS-MEDIA LAB (knowledge based system - media) at LundUniversity. Examples and scenarios are given at the symposiumoutgoing from projects carried through in the KBS-MEDIAenvironment which is shortly characterized as a multi agentenvironment with multimedia context dependent user interfacesto underlying facts bases.KeywordsPer Christiansson, Ph.D., Assoc. Prof.Department of Structural EngineeringLund Institute of technology. Lund UniversityBox 118, 221 00 Lund, SwedenAugust 1991Communication; interactive media; agents; man-machine interaction;knowledge representation; hypermedia; artificial intelligenceIntroductionInformation must onwards be regarded as a resource like labour,capital, property/product/material and energy. New system conceptsfor handling and representing knowledge must be formulatedand tried out in theoretical and practical trials. It isvery important that we try to transmit possible efficiencygains to something that will raise quality on both our work environment,cooperation possibilities and the end result of ourefforts.For examplewe can now focus on; dynamically establish net-13rd International Symposium on "Systems Research, Informatics and Cybernetics".Baden-Baden, Germany. Agust 12-18, 1991

DEMANDSAPPLICATIONSIT, InformationTechnologyFigure 1. There isa necessary mutualinfluence betweenthe applicationsand informationtechnology domainsfor short and longterm problem solutions.works, access, collect and handle very large information volumes,define new tools to use, build, and maintain the systems,create new ways to define detail levels/resolution when accessingthe models through "connectionist" thinking (that is to dynamicallyconnect knowledge chunks in varying patterns), mixknowledge representations, create adapted user views, createeasily understandable and interactive systems on applicationlevels. See also figures 2-5.Communication environmentFrom (Christiansson, 1990a). "The computer systems of tomorrowwill contain huge and complex information volumes. Issues concerningcommunication with the systems will be very essential.We will be able to search multi-dimensional spaces (room, time,resolution, etc.), see figure 6. Dependent on who is interactingwith the system and in what context it is done the searchmechanisms will be different:"Man orMachineaccessSpeech/languagesoundimagetextdrawinganimationfilm/videotactileMEDIUMMEDIUMCAPTUREDELIVERYStandardsBandwidthAvailabilityMediumSTOREMANIPULATETRANSFERPer Christiansson 1986Containsmodels of:ApplicationsProductsProcessesUsersManMachineToolsusebuildmaintainFigure 2. Information flowas linked processes on differentlevels.2

Figure 8. Logical structureof the 'DELPHI'demonstration system.Three layers can be seen:the context level with itsdifferent views (repair,hire, etc..) to the system,facts bases andtools/background agentswith intermediate shorttermmemory/"note-book".From (Christiansson,1990d).model will be and less flexible to changes. It is of course aquestion about optimizing in a set of constraints as ease ofsystem maintenance, and flexibility to new type of projectsetc. (see also figure 7).The KBS-MEDIA LABSince the autumn 1987 the author have been responsible forbuilding up the KBS-MEDIA (Knowledge-based Systems - Media)environment at the department of Structural engineering at LundUniversity. Demonstration systems have been and are built toFigure 9. A work station in the KBS-MEDIA laboratory. MacIIcomputer, B&W scanner, video camera, videodisk player, TVmonitor (also displayed on the computer screen), and opticaldiscs and audio input. CD-ROM player and removable hard diskunits are not shown in the picture.5