Alternative verification and validation technique for an alternative knowledge representation and acquisition technique

Ripple-Down Rules (RDR) are an alternative from mainstream approaches to the building of knowledge based systems (KBS). RDR use simple, but reliable, techniques for Knowledge Acquisition (KA) and representation which have been shown to support the on-line development, maintenance and validation of KBS. Key features of RDR that affect the approach to Verification and Validation (V&V) are the incremental nature of KA and the maintenance, use of cases for KA and validation, the use of an exception structure for knowledge representation and the development of KBS by experts. This article describes RDR and its approach to V&V concentrating particularly on recent extensions which use Rough Set Theory for verification and Formal Concept Analysis for validation.