An Expert System for the Environmental Impact Assessment Method

In this paper an expert system for environmental impact assessment, known as the EIAsystem, is presented. This system provides advice for hydropower development and river regulation projects. It is based on a method used for assessing the impact that hydropower development and river regulation will have on the environment, called the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Method (Strömquist & Tatham, 1992). Knowledge relating to the entire project is required with this method to enable a stepwise approach to be adopted for the assessment. Since people in developing countries lack knowledge about the impact a project will have on the environment, as well as expertise and resources, an expert system should be invaluable to assist the end users in their decision-making regarding the impact hydropower development and river regulation projects will have. The EIA-system was developed to provide advisory and educational support for end users using the EIA method within developing countries. The system has to be appealing to use and, moreover, it must motivate the users to utilise it and thereby the EIA method within political settings disinterested in environmental concerns. Furthermore, the system needs to be useable and comprehensible to the end users. To realise these requirements, a logic programming language was utilised together with hypermedia technology. Briefly, the logic programming language formalises the domain knowledge and the inference mechanism. The hypermedia technology used a multimedia system to constitute the user interface and to convey domain specific information and explanation facilities.