An Expert System for Regulatory Review of Hazardous Waste Surface Impoundment Dikes

The design and implementation of a microcomputer-based expert system (ES) to assist the regulatory review of hazardous waste surface impoundment dikes is discussed. DIKE(2.0) employs a “goal-dominated” ES shell architecture linked with a battery of external diagnostic algorithm programs to overcome many of the difficulties inherent to regulatory review and microcomputer applications. The system assists reviewers in interpreting the required design information, applies relatively sophisticated engineering analyses to seek possible design flaws, and assists in the interpretation of all automated computations. Because the application to hazardous waste surface impoundment dikes is rather specialized, this paper focuses on elements of the ES implementation of general applicability to other problems of automated environmental review.