A web-based expert system for the planning and completion of multilateral wells

This study introduces the development of a web-based fuzzy expert system (MULTSYS) for aiding in the preliminary planning and completion of multilateral wells. The reasoning process is based on a systematic planning approach for screening and selecting multilateral well candidates, lateral-section completion types, and junction complexity levels. A modular approach was employed. It consists of a number of knowledge modules which are integrated to provide various conclusions at different levels. The system has been fully implemented to run on the web and provides an excellent example of how a number of heterogeneous tools and applications can be integrated on the web. Rule-based knowledge sources and the inference mechanisms were implemented using ReSolver. The system clearly demonstrated the integration of the various tools in a seamless user-friendly environment. The structure of the developed system is presented together with case studies to demonstrate its main functionality. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.