On the Interpretability of Belief Rule-Based Expert Systems

As the generalization of fuzzy systems, the belief rule base (BRB) expert system is transparent and interpretable. However, the interpretability of BRB has almost been ignored recently and leads to the decrease of model credibility. The main reason is the lack of unified guidelines for establishing an interpretable BRB expert system. In this article, the interpretability characteristics of BRB are summarized systematically, which can be used as the guideline of BRB establishment. Four interpretability criteria are proposed to ensure the interpretability of BRB in the optimization. A modified optimization algorithm with the interpretability constraints transformed from the interpretability criteria is further developed. As such, an interpretable BRB can be established. A case study for health state evaluation of the aerospace relay is conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.