A Qualitative Reasoning based on an Ontology of Fluid Systems and Its Evaluation on a Power.pdfVIP

A Qualitative Reasoning based on an Ontology of Fluid Systems and Its Evaluation Yoshinobu KITAMURA, Mitsuru IKEDA and Riichiro MIZOGUCHI I.S.I.R., Osaka Univ. 8-1 Mihogaoka, Ibaraki, Osaka 567, Japan fkita,ikeda,mizg@ei.sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp Abstract. This research is concerned with causal understanding and qualitative reasoning of behavior of physical systems, which are crucial issues of model- based problem solving. In this paper, a new method of qualitative reasoning and causal ordering is proposed and its application to a power plant is presented. The method is based on our kernel ontologies of causality and time-resolution and a domain ontology of fluid systems. These ontologies help make the design ratio- nales of our method explicit and facilitate reusability of our models. The whole of the target system is represented by combining a set of local component models and global constraints. The component models include local and causal character- istics of each component which are independent of context for their reuse on the basis of the ontology of causality. Global constraints with time-scales are derived according to the general properties of the physical entity which are prepared be- forehand as a part of the domain ontology. They contribute to providing intuitive causal ordering of complex behavior originated in various configurations of com- ponents, including inter-component negative feedback. Furthermore, the method has been successfully applied to a power plant. All the reasoning results matched those obtained by a domain expert including their ambiguities. 1 Introduction Causal understanding and qualitative reasoning of behavior of physical syste