An expert system on site selection of sanitary landfill

It is desirable to encapsulate heuristic and empirical knowledge including hydrological and bio-geochemical considerations into the selection process of a potential landfill site. This paper delineates a prototype expert system, which has been developed using a commercially available microcomputer-based expert system shell VISUAL RULE STUDIO, for the selection of a landfill site. VISUAL RULE STUDIO acts as an ActiveX Designer under the Microsoft Visual Basic programming environment, with the hybrid knowledge representation approach under object-oriented design environment. The blackboard architecture, which is able to group all the knowledge together into an integrated system effectively, is adopted. The evaluation is based on the hazardous waste site ranking system recommended by the US Environmental Protection Agency, adapted to Hong Kong conditions. Increase in efficiency, improvement, consistency of results and automated record keeping are among the advantages of such a system.