Influence Net Modeling with Causal Strengths: An Evolutionary Approach

An approach to investigating the human decision cycle, particularly that employed by individuals and organizations during crisis, is presented. The collaborative approach described here is especially beneficial in today’s world of rapidly evolving, global situations within which U.S. security policies and operational plans are generated. This paper continues the documentation of research in the field of Influence Net modeling. Specifically, we will address the capabilities required of an automated system to encourage and facilitate the collaboration, both real-time and evolutionary, of decision makers and their supporting experts. We present our research results that extend traditional Bayesian inference net structure to allow for interactive use by modelers unfamiliar with probability theory or who are unwilling to spend the excessive time required to specify the traditional Bayesian model. The results of this research, called Causal Strengths (CAST) Logic, have been implemented as software applications by the authors and their colleagues. 1