The main disadvantages of existing expert systems are: (1) lack of coordination of symbolic reasoning and numeric computation, (2) lack of integration of different expert systems, (3) lack of efficient management of intelligent systems, and (4) lack of the capability to deal with conflicting facts and events among the different tasks. To solve these problems, the authors developed an integrated intelligent system that consists of several symbolic reasoning systems, numerical computation routines, and a metasystem to control the selection, operation, and communication of these programs. The key step in to constructing the integrated intelligent system is to organize a metasystem, for which the authors propose some novel concepts.
