Development of an intelligent control system for a municipal water distribution network

The proliferation of expert systems applications in diverse engineering fields has amplified the need for a more structured and formal development approach for these systems. In the paper an object-oriented knowledge engineering (OOKE) methodology is proposed and applied to the modeling of a water distribution problem. This methodology has been formulated by merging a knowledge modeling tool, the inferential modeling technique, with the object-oriented software engineering methodology. The OOKE methodology guides development of five consecutive models in the system development process. They include the requirements, analysis, design, implementation, and test model. In the paper, application of the methodology in guiding the development of the implementation model of the expert system for monitoring and control of the water distribution system is described.