The goal of the DARPA-funded Rapid Knowledge Formation (RKF) project (1999-2003) was to develop technology that enables people who are untrained in AI to build knowledge bases efficiently and accurately. This goal aligned perfectly with our research agenda, which we're continuing to explore under Project Halo. As part of the SRI team of researchers and engineers working on the RKF project, we developed the SHAKEN system for capturing domain knowledge from Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). A SME builds a knowledge base using SHAKEN by creating and editing concept maps. The nodes and relations in the map are drawn from our Component Library, a comprehensive collection of general events and entities. We claim that relatively few components, perhaps a few thousand, are sufficient for SMEs to assemble models of virtually any physical mechanism or process. We claim that these components are independent of domain, and that assembly from components instantiated to a domain is a natural way for SMEs to create knowledge-base content.

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/mfkb/RKF/projects/rkf.html