Expert systems for the transportation of hazardous and radioactive materials

Under the supervision of the Transportation Technologies Group which is in the Chemical Technology Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, an expert system prototype for the transportation and packaging of hazardous and radioactive materials has been designed and developed. The development of the expert system prototype focused on using the combination of hypermedia elements and the Visual Basic trademark programming language. Hypermedia technology uses software that allows the user to interact with the computing environment through many formats: text, graphics, audio, and full-motion video. With the use of hypermedia, a user-friendly prototype has been developed to sort through numerous transportation regulations, thereby leading to the proper packaging for the materials. The expert system performs the analysis of regulations that an expert in shipping information would do; only the expert system performs the work more quickly. Currently, enhancements in a variety of categories are being made to the prototype. These include further expansion of non-radioactive materials, which includes any material that is hazardous but not radioactive; and the addition of full-motion video, which will depict regulations in terms that are easy to understand and which will show examples of how to handle the materials when packaging them