End Date: 2010-10-01

Location: Oviedo (Asturias)

Country: Spain

Liaison: Action IC0702

Description:

Over the last thirty years there has been a growing interest in extending the theory of probability and statistics to allow for more flexible modeling of imprecision, uncertainty, vagueness and ignorance. Most such extensions result in a “softening” of the classical theory, permitting imprecision in probability judgements, and incorporating fuzzy constraints and events. Many approaches utilise concepts, tools and techniques developed in theories such as fuzzy set theory, possibility theory, imprecise probability theory and Dempster-Shafer theory.

The need for soft extensions of probability theory is becoming apparent in a wide range of application areas. For example, in data analysis and data mining it is becoming increasingly clear that integrating fuzzy sets and probability can lead to more robust and interpretable models that better capture all the information contained in the given data. Also, in science and engineering the need to analyse and model the true uncertainty associated with complex systems requires a more sophisticated representation of ignorance than that provided by uninformative Bayesian priors.

Soft Methods in Probability and Statistics (SMPS) 2010 will be organized by the European Centre for Soft Computing (ECSC), Mieres (Asturias), Spain, and held in the facilities of the University of Oviedo in Oviedo and Mieres (see venue). This is the fifth of a series of biennial conferences, starting in 2002.

SMPS 2010 aims to provide a forum for researchers to present and discuss ideas, theories, and applications. The scope of the conference is to bring together experts representing all existing and novel soft methods in probability and statistics. In particular, we would welcome papers combining probability and statistics with fuzzy logic, applications of Dempster-Shafer theory, possibility theory, generalized theories of uncertainty, generalized random elements, generalized probabilities etc.

End Date: 2010-03-29

Location: Vienna

Country: Austria

Liaison: Action IC0702

Description:

Department of Prof. Reinhard Viertl at the University of Vienna

End Date: 2010-04-15

Location: Coimbra

Country: Portugal

Liaison: COST ACTION IC0602

Description:

International Conference on Uncertainty and Robustness in Planning and Decision Making.
University of Coimbra, Portugal, 15-17 April 2010, http://www.inescc.pt/urpdm2010
The MC meeting will take place the Friday 16th of April at 6.00pm at the Department of Mathematics
of University of Coimbra. For location information and accommodation follow the conference link.

End Date: 2010-08-27

Location: St. Etienne

Country: France

IDs: EASSS-2010

Description:

The COST Action on Agreement Technologies endorses the 12th European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS 2010), to be held from August 23rd to 27th, 2010, in St. Etienne, France. More information

Karen K. Fullam, Tomas B. Klos, Guillaume Muller, Jordi Sabater, Andreas Schlosser, Zvi Topol, K. Suzanne Barber, Jeffrey S. Rosenschein, Laurent Vercouter and Marco Voss. The Fourth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 2005, pages 512-518.

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Abstract:

A diverse collection of trust-modeling algorithms for multi-agent systems has been developed in recent years, resulting in significant breadth-wise growth without unified direction or benchmarks. Based on enthusiastic response from the agent trust community, the Trust Competition Testbed Initiative has been launched, charged with the task of establishing a testbed for agent trust-and reputation-related technologies. This testbed serves in two roles: (1) as a competition forum in which researchers can compare their technologies against objective metrics, and (2) as a suite of tools with flexible parameters, allowing researchers to perform customizable, easily-repeatable experiments. This paper first scopes trust research objectives to be addressed in the testbed and desirable testbed characteristics, then presents a competition testbed specification that is justified according to these requirements. In the testbed’s artwork appraisal domain, agents, who valuate paintings for clients, may gather opinions from other agents to produce accurate appraisals. The testbed’s implementation architecture is discussed briefly, as well.

Bibtex:
@inproceedings{Fullam:2005:AAMAS
,key={Fullam}
,author={Karen K. Fullam and Tomas B. Klos and Guillaume Muller and
Jordi Sabater and Andreas Schlosser and Zvi Topol and K. Suzanne Barber and
Jeffrey S. Rosenschein and Laurent Vercouter and Marco Voss}
,title={A Specification of the Agent Reputation and Trust (ART)
Testbed: Experimentation and Competition for Trust in
Agent Societies}
,booktitle={The Fourth International Joint Conference on
Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems}
,year={2005}
,address={Utrecht, The Netherlands}
,month={July}
,pages={512–518}}

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Abstract:
Decentralized Reputation Systems have recently emerged as a prominent method of establishing trust among self-interested agents in online environments. A key issue is the efficient aggregation of data in the system; several approaches have been proposed, but they are plagued by major shortcomings.

We put forward a novel, decentralized data management scheme grounded in gossip-based algorithms. Rumor mongering is known to possess algorithmic advantages, and indeed, our framework inherits many of its salient features: scalability, robustness, globality, and simplicity.

We demonstrate that our scheme motivates agents to maintain a sparkling clean reputation, by showing that the higher an agent’s reputation is above the threshold set by her peers, the more transactions she would be able to complete within a certain time unit. We analyze the relation between the amount by which an agent’s average reputation exceeds the threshold and the time required to close a deal. This analysis is carried out both theoretically, and empirically through a simulation system called GossipTrustSim. Finally, we show that our approach is inherently impervious to certain kinds of attacks.

Bibtex:
@inProceedings{Bachrachb:2008:JAAMAS
,key={Bachrach}
,title={Gossip-Based Aggregation of Trust in Decentralized Reputation
Systems}
,author={Yoram Bachrach and Ariel Parnes and Ariel D. Procaccia
and Jeffrey S. Rosenschein}
,journal={Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems}
,year={2009}
,volume={19}
,number={2}
,month={October}
,pages={153–172}}

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Abstract:
We present a trust-based mechanism for the acquisition of information from possibly unreliable sources. Our mechanism addresses the case where the acquired information cannot be verified. The idea is to intersperse questions (“challenges”) for which the correct answers are known. By evaluating the answers to these challenges, probabilistic conclusions about the correctness of the unverifiable information can be drawn. Less challenges need to be used if an information provider has shown to be trustworthy. This work focuses on three major issues of such a mechanism. First, how to estimate the correctness of the unverifiable information. Second, how to determine an optimal number of challenges. And finally, how to establish trust and use it to reduce the number of challenges. Our approach can resist collusion and shows great promise for various application areas such as distributed computing or peer-to-peer networks.

Bibtex:
@inProceedings{staab2008towards,
author = {Eugen Staab and Volker Fusenig and Thomas Engel},
title = {Towards Trust-Based Acquisition of Unverifiable Information},
booktitle = {Cooperative Information Agents XII},
series = {{LNCS}},
volume = {5180},
year = {2008},
pages = {41–54},
publisher = {Springer Verlag},
editor = {Matthias Klusch and Michal Pechoucek and Axel Polleres},
isbn = {978-3-540-85833-1},
}

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Abstract:
We propose a concept that combines the cognitive with the computational approaches to experience-based trust reasoning. We emphasize that a cognitive component is vital for computationally modeling trust. At the same time, we recognize the predictive nature of trust. This suggests a combination of the different approaches. The idea is to introduce a cognitive component that produces factual positive and factual negative experiences. These experiences can then be used in a predictive component to estimate the future behavior of an agent. The components are combined in a modular way which allows the replacement of them independently. It further facilitates the integration of already existing trust update algorithms. In this work, we analyze the chain of trust processing for the concept step by step. This results in a concise survey on challenges for experience-based trust models.

Bibtex:
@inProceedings{staab08combiningExtended,
author = {Eugen Staab and Thomas Engel},
title = {Combining Cognitive with Computational Trust Reasoning},
booktitle = {Trust in Agent Societies},
year = {2008},
month = {December},
pages = {99–111},
publisher = {Springer Verlag},
editor = {Rino Falcone and Suzanne Barber and Jordi Sabater and Munindar Singh},
series = {{LNCS (LNAI)}},
volume = {5396},
isbn = {978-3-540-92802-7},
}

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Abstract: Many evidence-based trust models require the adjustment of parameters such as aging- or exploration-factors. What the literature often does not address is the systematic choice of these parameters. In our work, we propose a generic procedure for finding trust model parameters that maximize the expected utility to the trust model user. The procedure is based on gametheoretic considerations and uses a genetic algorithm to cope with the vast number of possible attack strategies. To demonstrate the feasibility of the approach, we apply our procedure to a concrete trust model and optimize the parameters of this model.

Bibtex:

@inProceedings{staab09tuning,
author = {Eugen Staab and Thomas Engel},
title = {Tuning Evidence-Based Trust Models},
booktitle = {Proc. of the 2009 IEEE Int. Conf. on Information Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust (PASSAT ‘09)},
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
year = {2009},
month = {August},
pages = {92–99},
isbn = {978-0-7695-3823-5},
}