This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I research project will develop an automated framework for knowledge acquisition. This automated framework will be based on the Principal Investigator's Rhem Knowledge Acquisition Framework and the Unified Modeling Language (UML). This automated framework will provide an environment for developing high-quality, reliable knowledge-based software systems for solving complex tasks that typically require a human expert. This research will advance the state-of-the-art in development of knowledge-based systems. Knowledge acquisition is one of the most difficult and error-prone tasks in building knowledge-based systems. It is a phase in the building of expert systems involving the identification of relevant technical knowledge, recording it, and getting it into computable form so the problem-solving engine of the expert system can apply it. The acquisition of knowledge and data is the most expensive part of building and maintaining expert systems. If this research is successful this commercial tool will significantly reduce the cost of developing knowledge-based systems
