RankPL: A Qualitative Probabilistic Programming Language

In this paper we introduce RankPL, a modeling language that can be thought of as a qualitative variant of a probabilistic programming language with a semantics based on Spohn's ranking theory. Broadly speaking, RankPL can be used to represent and reason about processes that exhibit uncertainty expressible by distinguishing "normal" from" surprising" events. RankPL allows (iterated) revision of rankings over alternative program states and supports various types of reasoning, including abduction and causal inference. We present the language, its denotational semantics, and a number of practical examples. We also discuss an implementation of RankPL that is available for download

Certainty Closure: Reliable Constraint Reasoning with Incomplete or Erroneous Data

Constraint Programming (CP) has proved an effective paradigm to model and solve difficult combinatorial satisfaction and optimisation problems from disparate domains. Many such problems arising from the commercial world are permeated by data uncertainty. Existing CP approaches that accommodate uncertainty are less suited to uncertainty arising due to incomplete and erroneous data, because they do not build reliable models and solutions guaranteed to address the user's genuine problem as she perceives it. Other fields such as reliable computation offer combinations of models and associated methods to handle these types of uncertain data, but lack an expressive framework characterising the resolution methodology independently of the model. We present a unifying framework that extends the CP formalism in both model and solutions, to tackle ill-defined combinatorial problems with incomplete or erroneous data. The certainty closure framework brings together modelling and solving methodologies from different fields into the CP paradigm to provide reliable and efficient approches for uncertain constraint problems. We demonstrate the applicability of the framework on a case study in network diagnosis. We define resolution forms that give generic templates, and their associated operational semantics, to derive practical solution methods for reliable solutions.Comment: Revised versio

Time-Aware Probabilistic Knowledge Graphs

The emergence of open information extraction as a tool for constructing and expanding knowledge graphs has aided the growth of temporal data, for instance, YAGO, NELL and Wikidata. While YAGO and Wikidata maintain the valid time of facts, NELL records the time point at which a fact is retrieved from some Web corpora. Collectively, these knowledge graphs (KG) store facts extracted from Wikipedia and other sources. Due to the imprecise nature of the extraction tools that are used to build and expand KG, such as NELL, the facts in the KG are weighted (a confidence value representing the correctness of a fact). Additionally, NELL can be considered as a transaction time KG because every fact is associated with extraction date. On the other hand, YAGO and Wikidata use the valid time model because they maintain facts together with their validity time (temporal scope). In this paper, we propose a bitemporal model (that combines transaction and valid time models) for maintaining and querying bitemporal probabilistic knowledge graphs. We study coalescing and scalability of marginal and MAP inference. Moreover, we show that complexity of reasoning tasks in atemporal probabilistic KG carry over to the bitemporal setting. Finally, we report our evaluation results of the proposed model

Collaborative Verification-Driven Engineering of Hybrid Systems

Hybrid systems with both discrete and continuous dynamics are an important model for real-world cyber-physical systems. The key challenge is to ensure their correct functioning w.r.t. safety requirements. Promising techniques to ensure safety seem to be model-driven engineering to develop hybrid systems in a well-defined and traceable manner, and formal verification to prove their correctness. Their combination forms the vision of verification-driven engineering. Often, hybrid systems are rather complex in that they require expertise from many domains (e.g., robotics, control systems, computer science, software engineering, and mechanical engineering). Moreover, despite the remarkable progress in automating formal verification of hybrid systems, the construction of proofs of complex systems often requires nontrivial human guidance, since hybrid systems verification tools solve undecidable problems. It is, thus, not uncommon for development and verification teams to consist of many players with diverse expertise. This paper introduces a verification-driven engineering toolset that extends our previous work on hybrid and arithmetic verification with tools for (i) graphical (UML) and textual modeling of hybrid systems, (ii) exchanging and comparing models and proofs, and (iii) managing verification tasks. This toolset makes it easier to tackle large-scale verification tasks