Daily Knowledge Valuation in Organizations

2Traceability

Traceability or keeping trace is used increasingly in the food industry after several hygiene and health problems, for instance mad cow disease. Several works into human–computer interface use cookies and profiling techniques in order to propose dedicated information search interfaces on the Web. The use of activity traces are also developed in knowledge engineering and especially experience recognition by adapting case-based reasoning through experience-based reasoning. In our work, we use the traceability of project activities in order to represent a project memory. In this chapter, after defining the notion of a trace, we present profiling techniques and experience-based reasoning.

2.1. Traces

In Wikipedia and Larousse, a trace is defined as the influence of an event on its environment. It is a series of mark left by a human, an animal or a thing in the environment. For instance, a dog follows the mark of somebody.

In the Collins dictionary, a trace is defined by:

1. – a mark or other sign that something has been in a place, archaeological remains;
2. – a tiny or scarcely detectable amount or characteristic;
3. – a footprint or other indication of the passage of an animal or person;
4. – any line drawn by a recording instrument or a record consisting of a number of such lines;
5. – something drawn, such as a tracing.

A trace is used in several domains as follows:

1. – in medicine: the postulated alteration in the cells of the nervous system that occurs as the result of any ...