FOCES: An experimental expert system to select appropriate foster care homes for children

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dc.contributor.authorWinett, Sheila G.en
dc.contributor.committeechairFox, Edward A.en
dc.contributor.committeememberBrown, Ezra A.en
dc.contributor.committeememberRoach, John W.en
dc.contributor.departmentComputer Scienceen
dc.date.accessioned2017-11-09T20:41:37Zen
dc.date.available2017-11-09T20:41:37Zen
dc.date.issued1987en
dc.description.abstractThe FOster Care Expert System (FOCES) was developed to provide advice to social workers of the Roanoke City Department of Social Services who must select foster care homes for children who cannot remain with their own families. It was implemented using the General pUrpose Expert Shell System (GUESS) and Horn Clause Prolog. The system's design was greatly influenced by unique features of the problem domain. Among the key concerns were: unresolved questions within the social work profession about foster home selection and evaluation, serious methodological and philosophical difficulties associated with defining a good "person-environment fit", and the volatile, free-form narrative nature of the information maintained by social services agencies about children and homes. "Traditional" approaches to knowledge acquisition and representation adopted by developers of expert systems were of limited use. Adaptation of extended "p-norm" Boolean queries previously used in information retrieval work simplified the knowledge representation and matching tasks for this human services application. Evaluation of FOCES' performance, using a small database of children and homes, has shown that the system can select appropriate foster care placements at least as well as some experienced social workers.en
dc.description.degreeMaster of Scienceen
dc.format.extentvi, 73 leavesen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/80055en
dc.language.isoen_USen
dc.publisherVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State Universityen
dc.relation.isformatofOCLC# 16359370en
dc.rightsIn Copyrighten
dc.rights.urihttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/en
dc.subject.lccLD5655.V855 1987.W561en
dc.subject.lcshExpert systems (Computer science)en
dc.subject.lcshArtificial intelligence -- Computer programsen
dc.subject.lcshFoster home careen
dc.titleFOCES: An experimental expert system to select appropriate foster care homes for childrenen
dc.typeThesisen
dc.type.dcmitypeTexten
thesis.degree.disciplineComputer Scienceen
thesis.degree.grantorVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State Universityen
thesis.degree.levelmastersen
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Scienceen

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