Intelligent user navigation systems for mine planning and design softwares

Mine planning and design is quite a complex issue and has emerged as a critical area. A number of software packages have come up (e.g. SURPAC of Australia, DATAMINE of USA) to solve and simplify the problem domain. Each of them has been found to have a typical lacunae-user convenience and navigation. Most of these packages have a modular structure and usually follow a menu-based front end. Despite the availability of manuals, many of the areas are found difficult to handle, resulting in misleading output. The paper gives a broad idea to overcome such difficulties with due emphasis on hiearchical knowledge base, user identification and a hypertext based MMI for such planning and design systems