Reasoning with Classification in Interactive Knowledge Elicitation

Abstract

This paper describes METIS, a system based upon a Method of Elicitation of Taxonomies used to Identify conceptual Structures. METIS is an interactive tool using a minimal core of structured descriptions, in order to acquire objects and to discriminate them. This core is progressively extended through the acquisition and recognition of a lot of objects; it represents a generalization hierarchy. The knowledge acquisition. and therefore the building of the generalization hierarchy, is guided by the taxonomy of classes associated to objects. The knowledge acquisition principle is incremental and uses the formalism of cooceptual graphs. We have applied METIS to the ichthyological field (i.e., the part of zoology dealing with fishes) as partofa research conventiori with U.R.2.C (i.e., research unit on environmentand aquatic resources of topical river valleys) from ORSlOM (i.e., the French cooperative research institute for the purpose of development).