Applications--Crisis Management

SPILLMAP 

hen a toxic chemical vat explodes and gushes out gallons of carcinogens mayhem, you can count on the expert, that is the expert system, to keep cool and take care of the situation. Research Software Training Facility at the Georgia Tech Research Institute developed the SPILLMAP expert system, which was written using Golden Common LISP.  This system is designed to deal with a spill crisis(an accidental discharge of materials that may be hazardous, required that action be taken as soon as the discharge was discovered), which may be occur under any of three geographical scales.  These are defined as the following:

1. Cases where the spill and spill source are discovered close together(ex. an industrial park)
2. Cases where the spill front has moved into an open, free-flowing body of water
3. Cases where spill material has contaminated the publicly-owned waste water treatment system

These geographical scales are designated as either nearby spills or far spills, which are further subdivided into open spills and shut-in spills, depending on whether contaminates have entered the waste water treatment network or not.

The user of the system is under considerable time pressure and may have a limited knowledge of hazardous materials or of spill containment procedures.  For example, a night watchman may be completing his rounds, and in doing so, uses a truck telephone to contact a central dispatcher, who consults SPILLMAP.  SPILLMAP asks a series of questions in order to make a preliminary situation analysis.  Then the system accesses its knowledge base, and then relays specific recommendations back to the central dispatcher in basic English, who then consults the night watchman.

SPILLMAP uses a forward-chaining inference engine to scan approximately 80 rules embedded in three different parts, each corresponding with one of the three geographical scales described above.  The processing time required rarely exceeds two seconds. A pause is programmed in after each access of a rule so that the system will not appear to run away from the users.

The versatility of this expert system software makes it useful to different groups of consumers.  The nearby spill option would interest major chemical companies and industrial park owners, while the open spill option would attract governmental agencies responsible for environmental quality.  Governmental agencies that track publicly-owned waste water treatment plant incidents would find the shut-in spill option useful in that part of their work. Although the system is versatile, it can still be modified to suit the needs of specific clients.