A Layered Dempster-Shafer Approach to Scenario Construction and Analysis

Author

Sanfilippo, Antonio ; Baddeley, Bob ; Posse, Christian ; Whitney, Paul

Author_Institution

Pacific Northwest Nat. Lab., Richland

fYear

2007

fDate

23-24 May 2007

Firstpage

95

Lastpage

102

Abstract

The ability to support creation and parallel analysis of competing scenarios is perhaps the greatest single challenge for today´s intelligence analysis systems. Dempster-Shafer theory provides an evidentiary reasoning methodology for scenario construction and analysis that offers potential advantages when compared to other approaches such as Bayesian nets as it places less conceptual load on the analyst by not requiring the complete specification of joint probability distributions. This paper presents a method that can further reduce the conceptual load by taking advantage of hierarchically structured indicators. We present a novel interface for this layered, Dempster-Shafer evidentiary reasoning approach and demonstrate the utility of this interface with reference to analysis problems focusing on comparing distinct hypotheses.

Keywords

Bayes methods; case-based reasoning; probability; uncertainty handling; Bayesian net; evidentiary reasoning method; hierarchical structured indicator; intelligence analysis system; joint probability distribution; layered Dempster-Shafer theory; parallel scenario analysis; scenario construction; Bayesian methods; Distribution functions; Humans; Information analysis; Intelligent systems; Joining processes; Picture archiving and communication systems; Probability distribution; Terrorism; Uncertainty; Bayesian networks; Dempster-Shafer theory; Evidence-based reasoning; analysis of competing hypotheses;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Intelligence and Security Informatics, 2007 IEEE

Conference_Location

New Brunswick, NJ

Electronic_ISBN

1-4244-1329-X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISI.2007.379540

Filename

4258680