Luxor, Egypt, April 2013 Expert Systems Role as a tool of Knowledge Management in Water Resource Management Dr. Ibrahim Ahmed Expert System Project Manager MCIT - Egypt ICT Trust Fund ITU Workshop on “ICT as an Enabler for Smart Water Management” (Luxor, Egypt, April 2013)

Luxor, Egypt, April Ministry of Communications and IT ICT Trust Fund Eng. Hoda Dahroug Regional Director

Luxor, Egypt, April Background: Community Development Projects in: - Agriculture & Small businesses - Women empowerment - People With Disability - Youth, Employability - Civil Society - Knowledge for development

Luxor, Egypt, April Background: We believe that Knowledge is power. We use Knowledge to empower the community (K4D). One of the most integral component in all our project is knowledge sharing and knowledge generation.

Luxor, Egypt, April ICT Trust Fund flagship service is, Kenanaonline.com, the community development portals. It is a network of knowledge portals (over 100,000 websites and portals) in several field of Development.

Luxor, Egypt, April Kenanaonline empowers the community with Knowledge Management tools, services, training, and technical support to encourage them sharing their knowledges.

Luxor, Egypt, April Kenanaonline in Numbers - 2 millions visitors per month - Over 1 million published webpage - over 150,000 websites and portals - 40% of visitors from Egypt - 50% from Arab countries

Luxor, Egypt, April Aradina.net A network of over 400 websites and portals.

Luxor, Egypt, April Websites and Portals consists of: - General Authority of Fisheries Resources Dev. - Research centers from ARC. - NGOs working in Agriculture. - Hundereds of experts,practitioners, farmers..

Luxor, Egypt, April What is the role of Knowledge Management in Water Resource Management.

Luxor, Egypt, April Water Management as in any other “Resource Management” needs good "Informative Decisions" to actually solve any problem.

Luxor, Egypt, April Decision Makers seek subject matter Experts Consultations to take informative decisions.

Luxor, Egypt, April A wider base of subject matter experts is required in order to take better decisions. Now the problem became clearer?!

Luxor, Egypt, April The problem is: Experts are as scarce as water resources Experts Knowledge are as as valuable as water. So the Knowledge of the expert is what matter most! The solution: Knowledge Management

Luxor, Egypt, April Why KM is crucial to Organization success? Prevent knowledge leakage from organizations due to; Retirement, turnover, and poor documentation. Knowledge sharing to eliminate duplication of efforts; saves time and money Reduce time required to build capacities in organizations.

Luxor, Egypt, April The Mission We need to capture Experts Knowledge! and avail it widely and openly accessible online for real time consultation.

Luxor, Egypt, April Capture Knowledge? Is it doable? Yes, Expert Systems are one of the essential tools for Knowledge Management. It depends on Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Acquisition Methodology.

Luxor, Egypt, April Challenges of Knowledge Capturing: Knowledge Acquisition methodology. Experts have no incentive to share their knowledges. Organizations lack Knowledge Management policies. Lack of tools for building Expert Systems.

Luxor, Egypt, April Expert System Project A Research project was held to answer these challenges and identify a sustainable model of building efficient Expert Systems. MCIT (Ministry of Communications and IT) IDRC (International Development Research Center) CLAES (Central Laboratory of Agriculture Expert System)

Pilot Expert systems

The Expert system gather input from the user in the form of questions to finally pinpoint the diagnosis of the problem.

We encourage Experts to add illustration photos for each answer

Expert system asks: What is the color of the root?

And gives illustration photo on demand to help user answer the question

The Expert system keeps on asking question...

Notice the list of diseases keeps narrowing as the user answer more questions.

Till it reaches a final diagnosis based on the input of the users.

Luxor, Egypt, April Note: Eng. El Araby, a Pomegranate Expert, is not familiar with IT or Knowledge sharing. Total time invested in building this expert system is 8 hours. – 3 Hours Knowledge Acquisition Basics – 3 Hours Building Expert System Rules – 2 Hours Inserting illustration photos

Luxor, Egypt, April Expert System Project Output A self paced training module on Knowledge Acquisition. Experts can learn from a multimedia CD how to build their own Expert System and publish it online.

Luxor, Egypt, April Online Expert System Service Develop an online service, an Expert System platform allowing, for the first time in the Arab world, the Experts to build their own Expert Systems.

Luxor, Egypt, April Knowledge Portals Service Organizations can manage knowledge generated by its stuff from articles, documents and expert systems, and aggregate all content under the organization knowledge portal.

Luxor, Egypt, April Expert System Keys of Success Easy to use, Arabic enabled tools. Multimedia Training CD. Ownership of the created knowledge belongs to the Experts. Support organizations to integrate KM in their structure and policies.

Luxor, Egypt, April Expert System for Water Resources Management Open invitation to Experts and Organizations to participate in building Expert Systems. Contact us for: Training and Technical Support Collaborating in a new project Sharing our research findings.

Luxor, Egypt, April Contact us: Thanks :)

Conclusions and Recommendations Luxor, Egypt, April