Abductive and deductive approach in learning from examples method for technological decisions making

Abstract

One of the fundamental problems in building engineering is to ensure conformance between the planned and the actual course of construction works. What may help solve this problem is a database with examples of performance of similar processes in analogous environmental conditions that enables estimating the basic process parameters (time, cost, quality, etc.). Case-based reasoning in a hybrid advisory system may play an important role between the rule-based reasoning and the machine learning when the data that has been gathered enables inference based on analogies with the completed processes, but their number is still inadequate for application of machine learning. Introduction of the abductive approach is intended to enable a detailed analysis of causes of nonconformances – a limited number of examples facilitate this. This is an example of cooperation between a human (search for causes based on intuition) and a computer (systematic gathering of examples). The authors also plan to use simulations to verify the abductive hypotheses. In the final part of the article, an example of application of case-based reasoning in the process of delivery of ready-mix concrete is presented.