the present invention provides a computer - implemented software tool that is adapted to listen continuously to data streams from a drilling operation and to process the data to generate a situation description for a current drilling situation in a form useful for automated continuous matching with a set of past cases stored in a knowledge database . the invention implements a case - based reasoning approach to match the current drilling situation as defined by the situation description with one or more stored past cases having a degree of similarity above a predetermined threshold level . matching cases are displayed to the drilling engineer as symbols on a case “ radar ”, allowing the drilling engineer to retrieve and view the details of a past case and take appropriate action based on drilling advice provided within the past case .