Temporal Aspects Of Modeling System Behavior
Lee A. Appelbaum, Thomas C. Fall · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1987
Systems that the authors have developed and delivered determine behavior by utilizing evidence which is uncertain and spread over time. The systems match data to templates of behavior to pick out a thread of activity which matches the evidence. By choosing those threads which are most supported, the systems can predict future activity. Hypotheses about groups of entities can be formed by selecting one thread for each entity of the group. The impact of constraints on groups can thus be evaluated out into the future. This paper describes the effort in building these systems and reviews the lessons learned. The thrust of the discussion is centered on behavior models, the templates which model a system's activity. The methods and representations we employ for temporal reasoning are actually consequences of these behavior models. We also discuss how such systems can easily be expanded to operate on less rigidly defined behavior patterns.