Explosive ordnance disposal associate - an expert system for landmine identification
By: Paul J. Arcangeli
Contributors: Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.) 
Publisher: Naval Postgraduate School; Available from National Technical Information Service
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Monterey, Calif; Springfield, Va
Language: eng
Number of pages: 141
Description: Today there are over 110 million mines scattered across 60 countries, and these mines kill or injure more than 26,000 people annually. In order for deminers to remove these mines, they must be able to quickly and      accurately identify them. Existing methods for landmine identification involve tedious searching through reference      books. This thesis presents an expert system for landmine identification, based on the set of thirty Bosnian mines      from the MineFacts landmine database. The user is queried about the landmine, and heuristics are applied to the      answers which are then used to calculate other information about the mine. This information is then filtered      through decision trees to generate a small group of candidates which are displayed with a photo and confidence      factor. The system was modeled and tested using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The system can narrow      candidates to within two choices when all queries are correctly answered and to within three candidates when      70% of the queries are correctly answered. The results show that this technique has potential for all types of      ordnance identification. A similar 5 stem could be implemented to cover all UXO for EOD use and as a      reconnaissance tool b non-EOD trained individuals.
Notes: Thesis advisor(s): Nelson D. Ludlow,  Carl R. Jones.

"September 1997."

Thesis (M.S. in Information Technology Management) Naval Postgraduate School, September 1997.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 139-140)

"Approved for public release; distribution unlimited"--Cover.

Also available online.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.

US Army (USA) author.

dk/dk cc:9116 01/15/98.