Heuristic assignment of CPDs for probabilistic inference in junction trees

Many researches have been done for efficient computation of probabilistic queries posed to Bayesian networks (BN). One of the popular architectures for exact inference on BNs is the Junction Tree (JT) based architecture. Among all the different architectures developed, HUGIN is the most efficient JT-based architecture. The Global Propagation (GP) method used in the HUGIN architecture is arguably one of the best methods for probabilistic inference in BNs. Before the propagation, initialization is done to obtain the potential for each cluster in the JT. Then with the GP method, each cluster potential becomes cluster marginal through passing messages with its neighboring clusters. Improvements have been proposed by many researchers to make this message propagation more efficient. Still the GP method can be very slow for dense networks. As BNs are applied to larger, more complex, and realistic applications, developing more efficient inference algorithm has become increasingly important. Towards this goal, in this paper, we present some heuristics for initialization that avoids unnecessary message passing among clusters of the JT and therefore it improves the performance of the architecture by passing lesser messages

Risk Assessment and Management of Petroleum Transportation Systems Operations

Petroleum Transportation Systems (PTSs) have a significant impact on the flow of crude oil within a Petroleum Supply Chain (PSC), due to the great demand on this natural product. Such systems are used for safe movement of crude and/or refined products from starting points (i.e. production sites or storage tanks), to their final destinations, via land or sea transportation. PTSs are vulnerable to several risks because they often operate in a dynamic environment. Due to this environment, many potential risks and uncertainties are involved. Not only having a direct effect on the product flow within PSC, PTSs accidents could also have severe consequences for the humans, businesses, and the environment. Therefore, safe operations of the key systems such as port, ship and pipeline, are vital for the success of PTSs. This research introduces an advanced approach to ensure safety of PTSs. This research proposes multiple network analysis, risk assessment, uncertainties treatment and decision making techniques for dealing with potential hazards and operational issues that are happening within the marine ports, ships, or pipeline transportation segments within one complete system. The main phases of the developed framework are formulated in six steps. In the first phase of the research, the hazards in PTSs operations that can lead to a crude oil spill are identified through conducting an extensive review of literature and experts’ knowledge. In the second phase, a Fuzzy Rule-Based Bayesian Reasoning (FRBBR) and Hugin software are applied in the new context of PTSs to assess and prioritise the local PTSs failures as one complete system. The third phase uses Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in order to determine the weight of PTSs local factors. In the fourth phase, network analysis approach is used to measure the importance of petroleum ports, ships and pipelines systems globally within Petroleum Transportation Networks (PTNs). This approach can help decision makers to measure and detect the critical nodes (ports and transportation routes) within PTNs. The fifth phase uses an Evidential Reasoning (ER) approach and Intelligence Decision System (IDS) software, to assess hazards influencing on PTSs as one complete system. This research developed an advance risk-based framework applied ER approach due to its ability to combine the local/internal and global/external risk analysis results of the PTSs. To complete the cycle of this study, the best mitigating strategies are introduced and evaluated by incorporating VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) and AHP to rank the risk control options. The novelty of this framework provides decision makers with realistic and flexible results to ensure efficient and safe operations for PTSs

Development of new cost-sensitive Bayesian network learning algorithms

Bayesian networks are becoming an increasingly important area for research and have been proposed for real world applications such as medical diagnoses, image recognition, and fraud detection. In all of these applications, accuracy is not sufficient alone, as there are costs involved when errors occur. Hence, this thesis develops new algorithms, referred to as cost-sensitive Bayesian network algorithms that aim to minimise the expected costs due to misclassifications. The study presents a review of existing research on cost-sensitive learning and identifies three common methods for developing cost-sensitive algorithms for decision tree learning. These methods are then utilised to develop three different algorithms for learning cost-sensitive Bayesian networks: (i) an indirect method, where costs are included by changing the data distribution without changing a cost-insensitive algorithm; (ii) a direct method in which an existing cost-insensitive algorithm is altered to take account of cost; and (iii) by using Genetic algorithms to evolve cost-sensitive Bayesian networks.This research explores new algorithms, which are evaluated on 36 benchmark datasets and compared to existing cost-sensitive algorithms such as MetaCost+J48, and MetaCost+BN as well as an existing cost-insensitive Bayesian network algorithm. The obtained results exhibit improvements in comparison to other algorithms in terms of cost, whilst still maintaining accuracy. In our experiment methodology, all experiments are repeated with 10 random trials, and in each trial, the data divided into 75% for training and 25% for testing. The results show that: (i) all three new algorithms perform better than the cost-insensitive Bayesian learning algorithm on all 36 datasets in terms of cost; (ii) the new algorithms, which are based on indirect methods, direct methods, and Genetic algorithms, work better than MetaCost+J48 on 29, 28, and 31 out of the 36 datasets respectively in terms of cost; (iii) the algorithm that utilise an indirect method performs well on imbalanced data compared to our two algorithms on 8 out of the 36 datasets in terms of cost; (iv) the algorithm that is based on a direct method outperform the new algorithms on 13 out of 36 datasets in terms of cost; (v) the evolutionary version of the algorithm is better than the other algorithms, including the use of the direct and indirect methods, on 24 out of the 36 datasets in terms of both costs and accuracy; (vi) all three new algorithms perform better than the MetaCost+BN on all 36 datasets in terms of cost

Visual recognition of multi-agent action

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 1999.Includes bibliographical references (p. 167-184).Developing computer vision sensing systems that work robustly in everyday environments will require that the systems can recognize structured interaction between people and objects in the world. This document presents a new theory for the representation and recognition of coordinated multi-agent action from noisy perceptual data. The thesis of this work is as follows: highly structured, multi-agent action can be recognized from noisy perceptual data using visually grounded goal-based primitives and low-order temporal relationships that are integrated in a probabilistic framework. The theory is developed and evaluated by examining general characteristics of multi-agent action, analyzing tradeoffs involved when selecting a representation for multi-agent action recognition, and constructing a system to recognize multi-agent action for a real task from noisy data. The representation, which is motivated by work in model-based object recognition and probabilistic plan recognition, makes four principal assumptions: (1) the goals of individual agents are natural atomic representational units for specifying the temporal relationships between agents engaged in group activities, (2) a high-level description of temporal structure of the action using a small set of low-order temporal and logical constraints is adequate for representing the relationships between the agent goals for highly structured, multi-agent action recognition, (3) Bayesian networks provide a suitable mechanism for integrating multiple sources of uncertain visual perceptual feature evidence, and (4) an automatically generated Bayesian network can be used to combine uncertain temporal information and compute the likelihood that a set of object trajectory data is a particular multi-agent action. The recognition algorithm is tested using a database of American football play descriptions. A system is described that can recognize single-agent and multi-agent actions in this domain given noisy trajectories of object movements. The strengths and limitations of the recognition system are discussed and compared with other multi-agent recognition algorithms.by Stephen Sean Intille.Ph.D