Aerospace engineers, in particular those involved in computational design and analysis, have need of technical information that supports their activities. This information can include descriptions of available computational codes and technologies, results, manuals, and reports. This project implemented a design for an automated information selection system to retrieve and present relevant technical information to an engineer, depending upon the engineer's need. The system was based on an integrated client/server environment for engineers to merge their analysis activities with online information sources.  The system implementation used various information technologies, including the agent-based Procedural Reasoning System (PRS) technology, evidential reasoning, database systems, and search engines. The system can monitor the user's activities, reason about the situation that faces the user, match the situation to relevant information, and search, retrieve, and display this information through a graphical user interface. Facilitating the access to this information through an automated system has two benefits: first, it can increase the efficiency of the engineering process, and second, it can decrease the chance that an error is made by an engineer, by ensuring that the engineer has access to information that is relevant to a given problem. 

Reference:

1. Rodman, L. C., Hegedus, M. C., Treidler, E. B., Wesley, L. P., Lee, J. D., and Sumethivit, A., "An Intelligent Information Selection System for the Aerospace Engineering Process," NEAR TR 554, Nielsen Engineering & Research, Mountain View, CA, Mar. 2000