Conceptual modeling of causal map: Object oriented causal map

• Authors: Soon Jae Kwon
• Venue: Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
• Year: 2011

This study has been started from question ''Is there a methodology that can make causal map comprised of causality as a database by using conceptual modeling method?'' In this research, causal map is proposed to represent causal relation by using conceptual modeling method. Therefore, we formalize causality as a cognitive rule to allow us to control changes in the decision making environment. Such causality is embedded in the real world (application domain). And, user (decision maker) use to represent set of causality which decision-makers have retrieved from the set of knowledge or experiences in application domain. Such set of causality that decision-makers possess in their know-how and short (long) term memory are usually formalized by causal map. It is verified for users whether this causal map is helpful in solving their problems. By extending the basis of conceptual modeling theory (ontology theory, classification theory, decomposition theory, and semantic network theory), we introduce a concept of causal entity diagram and address why causal map is needed to analyze a specific domain knowledge for given decision problem solving. Finally, object oriented causal map (O2CM) were employed to verify usefulness of causal map for user (decision maker) in this study.