COMEX: A Commodities Support System

Abstract

We are developing an intelligent support system, COMEX, to manage the data that a commodities analyst receives in agricultural reports. COMEX must have the following capabilities: 1) finding relevant facts, 2) determining implications, 3) checking reliabilities, 4) monitoring, 5) alerting, 6) reporting, 7) answering queries. The research involves natural language, representation, common sense reasoning, qualitative simulation and user modelling. Here, I address representation and reasoning by describing COMEX-0 a working prototype of a module of COMEX. COMEX-0 uses frames (Minsky, 1975), (Goldstein & Roberts, 1977) for representing knowledge. About twenty types of event are represented, together with crop-states, weather, commodities, quantities and prices. Frame structures are Interwoven with procedures. COMEX-0 builds frame structures by means of a formal dialogue with a user: Each frame has procedures for requesting information to instantiate its slots. Procedures attached to slots check that responses satisfy the requirements of the slot. Unsatisfied requirements complain giving a reason for unacceptability.