Network Engineering for Complex Belief Networks
This work addresses the problem of managing large-scale belief network development for domain-specific applications, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing systems engineering concepts.
The paper tackles the challenge of constructing complex belief network models by proposing a rapid prototyping approach with object-oriented representation and modular design, illustrated through a military intelligence example.
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.