Network Engineering for Complex Belief Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a rapid prototyping approach for engineering complex belief networks, emphasizing modular design, object-oriented representation, and evaluation methods, demonstrated through military intelligence examples.

Contribution

It presents a novel modular and object-oriented framework for belief network construction and evaluation, enhancing system engineering practices.

Findings

Effective network modularization criteria

Use of stubs for incomplete modules

Object-oriented representation captures semantics

Abstract

Like any large system development effort, the construction of a complex belief network model requires systems engineering to manage the design and construction process. We propose a rapid prototyping approach to network engineering. We describe criteria for identifying network modules and the use of "stubs" to represent not-yet-constructed modules. We propose an object oriented representation for belief networks which captures the semantics of the problem in addition to conditional independencies and probabilities. Methods for evaluating complex belief network models are discussed. The ideas are illustrated with examples from a large belief network construction problem in the military intelligence domain.