A knowledge acquisition process to analyse operational problems in solid waste management facilities

The available expertise on managing and operating solid waste management (SWM) facilities varies among countries and among types of facilities. Few experts are willing to record their experience, while few researchers systematically investigate the chains of events that could trigger operational fai...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Waste management & research 2006-08, Vol.24 (4), p.332-344
Main Authors: Dokas, Ioannis M., Panagiotakopoulos, Demetrios C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acquisitions
Decision Making
Decision Trees
Expert systems
Facilities planning
Facility Design and Construction - standards
Failure
Fault diagnosis
Humans
Knowledge acquisition
Knowledge management
Landfill
Landfills
Management
Marketing
Operational problems
Propagation
Quality Control
Refuse Disposal - methods
Refuse Disposal - standards
Refuse disposal facilities
Safety Management - methods
Safety Management - standards
Solid waste management
Studies
Task Performance and Analysis
Waste disposal
Waste Management - methods
Waste Management - standards
Waste management industry
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Summary:The available expertise on managing and operating solid waste management (SWM) facilities varies among countries and among types of facilities. Few experts are willing to record their experience, while few researchers systematically investigate the chains of events that could trigger operational failures in a facility; expertise acquisition and dissemination, in SWM, is neither popular nor easy, despite the great need for it. This paper presents a knowledge acquisition process aimed at capturing, codifying and expanding reliable expertise and propagating it to non-experts. The knowledge engineer (KE), the person performing the acquisition, must identify the events (or causes) that could trigger a failure, determine whether a specific event could trigger more than one failure, and establish how various events are related among themselves and how they are linked to specific operational problems. The proposed process, which utilizes logic diagrams (fault trees) widely used in system safety and reliability analyses, was used for the analysis of 24 common landfill operational problems. The acquired knowledge led to the development of a web-based expert system (Landfill Operation Management Advisor, http://loma.civil.duth.gr), which estimates the occurrence possibility of operational problems, provides advice and suggests solutions.
ISSN:0734-242X
1096-3669
0734-242X
DOI:10.1177/0734242X06063349