KGI-XGIS supporting decision making with knowledge-based techniques

The concept of the King George Island Expert GIS (KGI-XGIS) is introduced. KGI-XGIS is a combination of a rule-based expert system and a GIS meant to form an intelligent spatial decision support system. The system provides the spatial knowledge necessary for the environmental impact assessment process as dictated by the ‘Madrid Protocol’ for King George Island (South Shetland Islands, Antarctica). It also serves as information system to the scientific user community. Topographic maps, remote sensing data, thematic maps based on field surveys and other digital data form the input data to the GIS. Given the sparseness of the available data these must be combined and used in the most efficient way. Therefore expert knowledge of different domains will be coded into a rule-based expert system which is coupled to the GIS. To handle the expert knowledge and the spatial data of different types and different quality the KGI-XGIS incorporates knowledge-based techniques and fuzzy reasoning. The selection of a camp site on the ice free area of Fildes Peninsula and data quality management are used as two examples to demonstrate the capabilities of the system.