The overall objective of the proposed work to assist in energy conservation on a national scale, by providing a diagnostic tool for determining energy inefficiency in buildings. Diagnostic expertise to facilitate this task must be made available widely on a low cost per site basis. However, this expertise must be deployed in a timely fashion, precluding an academic training approach. Significant energy savings can be made in the national aggregate, if relatively simple, low cost measures are widely applied. We propose that the emerging technology of artificially intelligent expert systems is appropriate for this purpose. Expertise, in the form of computer software, can be repatriated and distributed cheaply and rapidly. The approach to be taken in Phase I has to demonstrate the feasibility and cost effectiveness of the prototype expert system as a powerful and flexible diagnostic tool, capable of serving the needs of energy managers. Principal tasks in Phase I are: technical tasks (developing of partial knowledge-base and rule-set for this application); and studies of the practicability of the application (marginal costs of deploying the system, anticipated payoffs from its use, and recommendations for further development). In Phase II, an operational prototype expert system will be tested.
