Multiple Hypotheses Situation Assessment Thanh C. Ly Maritime Operation Division DSTO Rockingham, Australia. [email protected] Steward Greenhill, Svetha Venkatesh School of computing Curtin University Perth, Australia. Adrian Pearce Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering University of Melbourne Melbourne, Australia. [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] demonstration of submarine situation assessment. It concludes by pointing what improvement is needed to generate more useful submarine situation assessment. Abstract - Situation assessment is the process of interpreting the situation using incomplete information. Quality situation assessment enables quality and rapid response by operators. Multiple interpretations arise from different assumptions given to missing information, and new information will determine which interpretation is correct, thus requiring system capable of belief revision. The Situation Description Language (SDL) was developed with the capability to form and reason with multiple hypotheses to support belief revision, and allow concurrent multiple interpretations of a situation. Presenting multiple hypotheses could avoid fixating on a single interpretation where better alternatives exist. SDL was demonstrated by forming simple situation assessments in the submarine domain. The issues looked at are how hypotheses are created, and how to eliminate hypotheses selectively. 2 2.1 Situation Assessment An important finding of research into decision-making is [1]. ... experts rarely report considering more than one option. Instead, their ability to handle decision points appears to depend on their skill at recognising situations as typical and familiar. This recognition suggests feasible goals, sensitises the decision-maker to important cues, provides an understanding of the causal dynamics associated with a decision problem, suggests promising courses of action, and generates expectancies. Keywords: situation assessment, non-monotonic reasoning, expert system, multiple hypotheses 1 Background Introduction Situation assessment is the process of interpreting the situation using incomplete information. In order to make decisions, people must make assumptions about missing or inaccurate information. Good decisions depend on good situation assessments. As more information or information that is more accurate arrives, current assumptions may turn out to be incorrect. The big problem in logical systems is retracting conclusions based on these false assumptions, and drawing subsequent conclusions. This problem is referred to as belief revision. The focus of this paper is the facilities provided by Situation Description Language (SDL) to form multiple hypotheses to partially solve this problem, and its application in submarine situation assessment. It will highlight the potential benefits and present concurrent interpretations of a situation. The paper starts by describing research highlighting the importance of situation assessment in decision-making, the use of multiple hypotheses by others, and gives a brief description of SDL. This is followed by a detailed description of SDL multiple hypotheses facilities, and a 972 The above statement suggests that if an expert could perceive the situation clearly, the task of knowing what to do becomes straightforward. The process of forming a perceived situation is called situation assessment (SA). This expertise is what Klein et al [1] refer to as tacit knowledge. To form true situation assessment, a complete, highlevel interpretation is required. There is a substantial “information gap” between information that is available (inputs to SA) and information that is required (outputs from SA). Most sensors only provide a limited amount of information, and errors exist in the information they provide due to the nature of the sensors and variable environmental conditions. For instance, a passive sonar sensor only indicates the possibility that something is there. Information regarding what it is, where it is and what it is doing are all assumed. In addition, a detected object can be lost and regained. One can treat the new contact as a new vessel previously undetected, or as a vessel that was previously detected. These uncertainties in information give rise to many possible interpretations. Human limitations prevent us from considering many possible interpretations in parallel [2]. Cognitive work has consistently found that people prefer to stick with the current interpretation, and favour generating explanations for why new information does not fit the current hypothesis instead of switching to an alternative hypothesis [3]. They will switch when sufficient contradictory evidence exists. A possible explanation is that unless these alternatives are assessed they cannot be compared to the current interpretation. Therefore, the existence of better interpretations is not obvious. An important overview of the military situation assessment problem is given by Ben-Bassat and Freedy [4]. A survey of other works on situation assessment and techniques for encoding the process is found in [5]. 2.2 Multiple hypotheses Maintaining multiple hypotheses offer a way of doing belief revision, and to be able to present the user with alternate interpretations of the situation. When conclusions are based on invalid assumptions, or conclusions prove incorrect, it is necessary to revise the belief set to resolve the contradictory information. The truth maintenance system by Doyle [6] is a domain independent system designed to handle belief revision. The system tracks the dependencies of every conclusion. When a dependency of a conclusion becomes false, that conclusion and the conclusions based on it are removed. This work has led to the development of many other reasoning systems that handle belief revision. These techniques return a single answer to existing data. Multiple hypotheses partially solve the belief revision problem as conclusions based on particular assumptions are contained within a hypothesis. When one of these assumptions is eventually made false, the hypothesis can be removed along with its conclusions. Situation assessment with high uncertainty, true or false is not determined by a single piece of data. An automatic system providing a single “right” answer is far in the future. By having different interpretations running in parallel allows for a comparison of fitness of the various possible interpretations. Users viewing the various interpretations will allow them to apply their expert judgement of which interpretation is more likely. Research indicates that viewing multiple hypothesis helps people avoid fixating on the wrong interpretation [7]. Multiple hypotheses have been used for situation assessment before. Part of the situation assessment is track association. Multiple hypotheses tracking [8] is a low level tracking algorithm that hypothesize different possible associations of track segments to targets. A rank is given to each of those hypotheses. Similar principles are applied when dealing with higher-level information fusion [9]. The obvious limitation is the number of hypotheses generated. Large number of hypothesis will consume too much computing resources. In terms of situation assessment, the number of hypotheses should be manageable, as too many hypotheses will only confuse the viewer. 973 2.3 Situation description language (SDL) SDL is a domain independent integrated knowledge representation and reasoning system. Its capabilities include: 1. Object-oriented data modelling with support for type-bound procedures and single-inheritance. This structure leads to simpler design, and allows type mismatch to be detected prior to execution. 2. A forward-chaining inference system with RETEbased pattern matcher. 3. A procedural programming system to allow complex sequence of actions to be called in multiple places. 4. Representations for time (see paragraph for more information) and space. 5. Representations for uncertainty using confidence. 6. Allow creation and manipulation of Java objects as part of its language. The SDL system handles time in two ways. Precise times may be represented using REAL/INTEGER values. Imprecise or qualitative temporal knowledge may be represented using abstract points in time. A temporal constraint is a relationship between points in time. The SDL temporal representation corresponds to a simple temporal problem (STP) [10]. In this representation, a set of variables X1…Xn represents points in time. A constraint is an edge Eij labelled by an interval [aij, bij], which represents the constraint: aij <= Xj - Xi <= bij Temporal information is queried using the Allen relationship operator [11]. Forward chaining rules are written as IF statements. An IF statement consists of a number of patterns connected by logical operators, follow by set of action statements. Pattern = TypeIdent [ Ident ] "{" { PatternBinding | ":" Expr } "}" . A Pattern is composed of a type identifier, a possibly empty set of bindings, and an optional variable identifier. The pattern is satisfied when an object of the indicated type matches the bindings. If a variable identifier is given, this is bound to the object that matches the pattern. Each PatternBinding specifies an attribute and the required value for that attribute. If the value is an expression, the attribute must match this value. If the value is a pattern variable, the attribute must match the value of the variable. A set of conditions is only satisfied if a set of bindings exists that satisfies each individual pattern. If one or more optional Boolean expressions are given, the match only succeeds if the expressions all evaluate true. Within a pattern binding, identifiers enclosed within single brackets (e.g. classification <class>) denote pattern variables, which are bound to the value of the given attribute. Identifiers enclosed within double brackets (eg. <<etype>>) denote pattern variables, which are bound to the value of an element of an attribute with collection type (i.e. set, sequence, or potential). An example of a pattern is below. ENTITY e {classification <class> status <stat> :stat = CREATED : class = NAVALKB.UNKNOWN} To help interpret the pattern above and rules to come, user-defined types are in italic capital, variables are in bold, SDL keywords are in plain capital, and record’s attributes are in plain lower case. The type identifier is ENTITY, the optional variable identifier is e. The variable class and stat are variables bind to attributes of this record, and must satisfy the two Boolean expressions. For more detailed information about the language, see [12] [13]. 3 3.1 SDL multiple hypotheses Creation and removal Hypotheses are a way of managing alternative “possible worlds”. A HYPOTHESIS is a set of objects that is held to be speculative, in the sense that they may or may not exist. Hypothetical objects must be explicitly tagged HYPOTHETICAL within their type declaration, as shown in the example below. The example shows a record for storing an estimated speed of an entity. ESTIMATE = HYPOTHETICAL INSTANT RECORD entity : ENTITY; min : REAL; max : REAL; END; SPEEDEST = HYPOTHETICAL INSTANT RECORD (ESTIMATE) END; It is derived from a more general class ESTIMATE. All HYPOTHETICAL records have the attribute “hypothesis” to record the hypothesis it belongs. Every hypothetical object exists within at least one hypothesis. A hypothetical object may only be referred to by other objects within the same hypothesis. Thus, any object that refers to a hypothetical object must be hypothetical. Hypothetical objects may refer to nonhypothetical objects. A hypothesis has a special interpretation to the rule system. When a pattern within a condition matches a hypothetical object, a “hypothetical context” is established. Further conditions only match hypothetical objects within the same hypothesis. In effect, every hypothetical pattern has an implied hypothesis H 974 pattern binding; so all patterns must have the same value for their “hypothesis” attribute. A new hypothesis is created using the HYPOTHESIS statement. "HYPOTHESIS" Ident [ "FROM" Expr ] StatementList "END". A HYPOTHESIS statement creates a new hypothesis. By default, this is an empty hypothesis containing no hypothetical objects. If a hypothesis is specified using the FROM clause, the new hypothesis contains identical copies of all objects in the specified hypothesis. A statement sequence is executed in the new hypothesis. Within the statement, the MAP function can be used to refer to the objects in the new hypothesis that correspond to objects in the source hypothesis. Removal of a hypothesis automatically removes the associated HYPOTHETICAL objects. The primary issue with branching hypotheses is rapid growth in the number of hypotheses, quickly consuming available resources. SDL leaves the decision when to create and remove a hypothesis to the developer. Section 3 will describe the policy adopted for a submarine domain example. 3.2 Temporal knowledge The need to handle hypotheses introduces some complexity into the SDL temporal model. Each hypothesis corresponds to a possible world in which a set of hypothetical objects exists. The temporal model includes one STP that expresses constraints between all non-hypothetical points in time. This is called the root partition and includes the variables X(0)i and edges E(0)ij. In addition, each hypothesis introduces its own variables X(k)i and edges E(k)ij. For each hypothesis k, there is a corresponding STP defined by variables X(0) U X(k) and edges E(0) U E(k). If there are m hypotheses, there are m+1 STPs. In the current implementation, SDL checks for consistency of its temporal knowledge base whenever temporal assertions are added. Additions of assertions within hypotheses therefore require the solution of one STP. Addition of non-hypothetical assertions requires the solution of m STPs. Possible future optimisations are: 1. Defer the checking of consistency on addition of edges. This reduces the ability to localise inconsistencies (ie. to determine which statement caused an inconsistency) in favour of better performance. 2. Compute solutions incrementally. If a solution already exists it is possible to compute an amended solution in less time than it takes to recompute a full solution. 3.3 Display SDL incorporates a general purpose spatial, temporal and information display designed for multiple hypotheses. Information for different hypothesis can be viewed separately, have all hypotheses overlayed on top of each other, or be limited to non-hypothetical information. An example of this display is shown in Figure 1. A pull down menu allows the user to select the view. The example shows the selected hypothesis with two entities. Figure 1. Sample main view showing spatial display (top left), temporal display (top right) and object display (bottom). 4 4.1 Multiple hypothesis: situation assessment submarine Classification based hypothesis Classification of a contact is one of two triggers for creating new hypotheses in this example. A contact is a perceived entity derived from sensory information. To deduce the threat and intent of the entity requires knowing the identity of the contact. The accuracy of that information will grow and change as new information arrives. Assessment based on an assumed classification, will require retraction when the classification is proven incorrect. Many assessments are based on an assumed classification of the contact. Each hypothesis contains a set of entities. Each entity can be associated with at most one contact. Each valid hypothesis must have at least one entity associated with each contact. Entities are created when new contacts are detected. Unlike a contact, which has a set of potential classification, an entity only has one definite classification. 975 When a new contact is detected, a new entity of unknown classification is created in each hypothesis without an entity associated to it. Hypotheses containing these entities are split when the associated contact dominant classification changes. In the split, one hypothesis continues as before as an unknown entity. In the other hypothesis, the entity is given the dominant classification of the associated contact. If the dominant classification of the contact changes again, the hypothesis where the contact is associated to an unknown entity is split again. A split can only occur once per possible contact classification. That is, if a contact dominant classification becomes submarine, then fishing boat and back to submarine, the split will not occur the second time submarine became the dominant classification. This avoids the problem of creating and eliminating hypotheses frequently when the contact dominant classification oscillates between multiple classifications. Obsolete hypotheses created from changes to a contact dominant classification are deleted when the contact is permanently lost. A contact is lost when it is no longer detected by any sensor. At this point, no new information can arrive about the contact to cause another splitting of hypothesis, or reverting to a previous dominant classification. A hypothesis is obsolete if the entity associated with that contact has a different classification to the final dominant classification of the contact. This process is clarified by Figure 2. It shows a new contact triggering the creation of a new entity in one hypothesis. When the contact dominant classification changed to submarine, the hypothesis was split. One hypothesis continues with the entity as unknown, and in the other hypothesis that same entity takes on a classification as a submarine. The split happens again when the dominant classification changed to fishing boat. When the contact became lost, only the hypothesis where the entity is treated as a fishing boat (the dominant classification) remain. The others were eliminated because the entity classification is not the dominant classification of the contact. The rules implementing this strategy are shown below: RULE SplitUnknown IF ENTITY e {classification <class> status <stat> curContact <trk> :stat = CREATED : class = NavalKB.UNKNOWN} & SELF.CONTACT trk { type <<etype>> :etype IN LIKELY(trk.type) :NOT(NAVALKB.UNKNOWN IN LIKELY(trk.type)) : NOT( etype IN e.morphTo )} THEN classificationSplit( e, etype); e.morphTo := e.morphTo + {etype}; END SplitUnknown; RULE KillInvalidClassEntity IF SELF.CONTACT trk { status <stat> : (stat = SELF.CEASE) OR (stat = SELF.LOST)} & ENTITY e {hypothesis <H> classification <class> curContact <trk> originalContact <trk> classification <class> :NOT (class IN LIKELY (trk.type) )} & MYHYPOTHESIS myh {h <H>} THEN UPDATE DELETE H; DELETE myh; END; END KillInvalidClassEntity; Contact lost Dominate possible Class = Fishing boat Dominate possible Class = Submarine New Contact Dominate class = Unknown Events Under the current scheme, the final dominant classification is assumed correct. That is not necessarily the case. A more complex scheme needs to be developed to resolve this limitation efficiently. (eliminated) un n ow kn Un k w no n Fis hin gb oat Unknown Table 1. Association based hypothesis Contact New contacts C1 and C2 detected. Entity and hypothesis Initial hypothesis New Entity E1 associated with C1. New Entity E2 associated with C2. Both C1 and C2 were lost. Initial hypothesis Entity E1 and become free. New contact C3 detected. Initial hypothesis New Entity E3 associated with C3. E1 and E2 stay free. E2 (continue) Sub ma rine (eliminated) Description. The existence of two new contacts triggers the belief of the existence of two new entities associated with those contacts. Two contacts becoming lost result in their associated entities becoming free entities. The existence of a new contact triggers three possible interpretations. Hypothesis(C3 is E1) Associate E1 with C3. E2 stays free. Figure 2. Show creation of hypotheses from changes in classification. 4.2 An entity has four possible states. An entity starts with the status created, and is associated with the contact the entity was first picked up on. An entity status becomes free once the associated contact is lost. The entity is given the status regained when, as a free entity the associated contact was lost for a short period, but reacquired. The free entity can also be re-associated with a new contact, in which case its status becomes reassociated. A new contact can be associated with any free entities within a hypothesis. Instead of trying to pick the right association, each possible re-association forms a new hypothesis. In addition, there will be a hypothesis where the new contact is not associated with any previous entities. New information arriving about the contact determines the validity of the hypotheses. Association based hypothesis Re-association is another trigger for new hypotheses. A submarine will lose a contact when none of its sensors detects the vessel. That vessel has not disappeared. It can reappear later as a new contact on one of the sensors. The decision to associate the new contact with an old contact depends on whether the vessel involved is believed to be the same vessel. Correct re-association results in a clearer picture of the situation by using the historical information of the lost contact. If the association is incorrect, any conclusions made will be wrong. The confusion is compounded when the vessel, which should have been reassociated, re-appears as a new contact. The commander will have to treat the new contact as a new vessel. Alternatively, re-associate the new contact with another previously lost contact in error. 976 Hypothesis(C3 is E2) Associate E2 with C3. E1 stays free. Table 1 shows the case with two free entities, and how they trigger the creation of two new hypotheses. The chosen association will determine how one views the situation. Figure 3 shows the case where a new contact is associated with the lost submarine, while Figure 4 shows the case where the new contact was associated with the lost warship. 4.4 Removal of hypothesis New information arriving about a contact will conflict with the associated hypothesized entities. The inconsistency could be due to uncertainties of the domain, or an incorrect hypothesis. It is difficult to know which is the case. Some are minor, and these triggers what are called EXPLAINAWAY assessment records. Each one holds the explanation on why a particular piece of new information does not fit the hypothesis. Other inconsistencies state a hypothesis is not valid and can be removed. Three consistency constraints included so far are: Type mismatch: Mismatch between entity classification and the dominant classification of reassociated contact. For instance, where a new contact was re-associated with a submarine entity, but the contact dominant classification was changed to a warship. The actual rule that carry this out is shown below: Figure 3. View when associating new contact with lost submarine. RULE KillBadAssociation IF ENTITY e {hypothesis <H> classification <class> curContact <trk> status REASSOCIATED} & SELF.CONTACT trk {type <<etype>> :NOT (NAVALKB.UNKNOWN IN LIKELY(trk.type)) :NOT (class IN LIKELY(trk.type))} & MYHYPOTHESIS myh {h <H>} THEN UPDATE DELETE myh; DELETE H; END; END KillBadAssociation Spatial improbability: An entity cannot reach its new position from last known position in available time. That is, given entity e was at p at t1 and at q at t2, the constraint is violated when: distanceBetween(q,p)/(t2-t1) > e.maxspeed Figure 4. View when associating new contact with lost warship. 4.3 External information Information about an entity can come from external sources, like mission briefing, intelligence reports, or from friendly ships within the region. Such information on the opponent force disposition is encoded as free entities. They are treated the same way as free entities associated with a lost contact, as both share the same characteristics. When a new contact is detected, it can be associated with these free entities in the same way as those created from onboard sensors. The validity of these re-associations is again judged by the new information collected about the contact 977 The position p and q were represented as a SDL spatial line segment. The line represents possible spatial positions of the entity, because sensory error instills error into the deduced range. Thus, the distance between p and q is calculated using the SDL spatial facility to return the minimum distance between the two line segments. Multiple submarines: Two or more entities cannot exist in one hypothesis. The risk of friendly fire and collision is very high if two submarines are deployed in close proximity. So, the likelihood of detecting two submarines is highly unlikely. 5 Future works There are two directions for future works to enhance the submarine situation assessment. The first is experimenting with more sophisticated ways of handling multiple hypotheses. At present, mechanisms exist to generate explanations as to why certain new data do not fit a hypothesis. A mechanism to weight these negative evidences and summing their weight would offer a better way of ranking hypotheses and selecting the hypotheses to remove. Some of the spatial techniques used in multiple hypothesis tracking could be useful [8]. The problem is the same as submarine association problem described, but it uses only spatial information for ranking different possible associations. Another way of handling multiple hypotheses is to allow an operator to decide what alternate hypothesis to pursue. This taps into that operator expertise of what are likely alternate interpretations. The operator can look at negative evidences to decide when a hypothesis becomes implausible, and can be dropped. The tool would allow the operator to see the result of the alternate chain of thought, without distracting too much the operator own chain of thought. The number of hypotheses is maintained at a finite number the operator is interesting in or can monitor. The second focus is to enrich the situation assessment made within a hypothesis. The current assessments are limited in nature, and came from informal discussion with subject experts. The aim is to do a formal analysis of threat assessment as performed by subject experts, and to attempt to assist that process by generating situation assessment using SDL. 6 Conclusions Situation assessment is a process of interpreting the situation from incomplete information. Using multiple hypotheses is a way of forming multiple interpretations of the situation and to be able to favor one interpretation over another as new information arrives. A description of SDL multiple hypotheses facilities were described and an example of its application in submarine situation assessment was given. The focus was on: 1. How hypotheses were generated by changes to classification of a perceived entity, and association of new contact with lost entities. 2. How to contain possible hypotheses by removing less likely hypotheses. This paper had shown it is feasible to hypothesize multiple situation assessments using the SDL. The SDL is capable of generating multiple interpretations by making different assumptions to missing or uncertain information. The mechanisms within the SDL can cull hypothesis whose assumptions later proved faulty or becomes less likely. The method presented for culling hypothesis is cruel and abrupt. Alternate methods suggested offer avenues for improvement. 978 References [1] G. A. Klein, R. Calderwood, and D. MacGregor, Critical decision method for eliciting knowledge, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man & Cybernetics, vol. 19, pp. 462-72, 1989. [2] W. W. Zachary, Decision Support Systems : Designing to Extend the Cognitive Limits, Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction, M. Helander, Ed.: Elsevier Science, 1988, pp. 997-1030. [3] M. J. Liebhaber and C. A. P. Smith, Naval Air Defense Threat Assessment: Cognitive Factors and Model, 2000 Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, 2000. [4] M. Ben-Bassat and A. 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