Dear Sergio:

On Wed, 18 Sep 2002, Sergio Storari wrote:

> Hi I'm beginning to work on multi-agent system for distributed
> diagnosis.  To this purpose I'm investigating on bayesian networks and
> how to merge the reasoning of different agents each one enclosing its
> own bayesian network and collecting documentation about works
> regarding these methodologies.

I know of a few representation and reasoning formalisms that support the
activity you mention.  I have been working (with current students, former
students Dr.  Mark Bloemeke and Dr. Young-Gyun Kim, and my colleague, Dr.
John Rose) on something called "Agent-Encapsulated Bayesian Networks"
(AEBNs) for a few years (off and on).  The only full paper published on
the topic is [Valtorta, Kim, and Vomlel, 2002].  (See full reference below
my signature.)

I am attaching a table (in MS-Word) 

[mod: contact Marco directly for  the word doc...]  

that summarizes some features of AEBNs and three other approaches:
 Multiply Sectioned Bayesian Networks (MSBNs), Multiple Entity
 Bayesian Networks (MEBNs), and Decentralized Sensing Networks (DSNs).
 You must be aware that there are serious impossibility results
 involving decentralized sensing (DSNs) and "merging" Bayesian
 networks (MSBNs) and serious practical difficulties in the approaches
 that try to overcome the impossibility results by making additional
 assumptions of independence (as in AEBNs) or relaxing the
 distribution requirement (as in MEBNs).  The table tries to summarize
 this.  I also attach below my signature bibliographical entries (in
 BibTeX) for the articles mentioned in the table.

>
> I kindly ask to anyone who knows relevant literature about this subject t=
o
> send me references.

I hope you will get many interesting replies to your query!  Please
summarize them to the UAI list.

> Thank you in advance.
> Best Regards
> Sergio Storari
>

You are welcome.

>
> _________________________________
> Ing.Sergio Storari
> Dipartimento di Ingegneria
> Universit=E0 di Ferrara
> Via Saragat,1
> 44100 Ferrara FE
> Tel: +39532293893
> Fax: +39532768602
> email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> _________________________________
>
>
>

Best wishes and best regards.

Marco Valtorta=09=09=09Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208, U.S.A.=09http://www.cse.sc.edu/~mgv/
803.777-4641  fax:-3767  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"We are all Sicilians!"=09--President Jacques Chirac of France in a Sept. 8=
,
2002 New York Times interview, referring to the "trans-Atlantic bond"
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
@book{Jensen01,
   author =3D    {Jensen, Finn V.},
   title =3D     {{B}ayesian Networks and Decision Graphs},
   publisher =3D {Springer},
   year =3D      2001,
   address =3D   {New York, NY},
}
@article{Valtorta02,
        author =3D {Valtorta, Marco and Young-Gyun Kim and Ji\v{r}\'{\i}
Vomlel},
        title =3D {Soft Evidential Update for Multiagent Systems},
        journal =3D {International Journal of Approximate Reasoning},
        volume =3D 29,
        number =3D 1,
        pages =3D "71-106",
        year =3D 2002,
        month =3D {January},
}
@phdThesis{Bloemeke98,
   author =3D {Bloemeke, Mark},
   title =3D  {Agent Encapsulated {Bayesian} Networks},
   school =3D {Department of Computer Science, University of South
Carolina},
   year =3D   1998,
}
@techReport{Bloemeke02,
=09author =3D {Bloemeke, Mark and Valtorta, Marco},
=09title =3D=09 {The Rumor Problem in Probabilistic Multiagent Systems,
{Technical Report CSCE TR-2002-003}},
  institution =3D {Department of Computer Science and Engineering,
University of South Carolina},
  year =3D 2002,
  month =3D {June},
}
@inProceedings{Xiang00,
   author =3D    {Xiang, Y. and Lesser, V.},
   title =3D     {Justifying Multiply Sectioned {B}ayesian Networks},
   booktitle =3D {Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on
Multi-Agen
t Systems (ICMAS-2000)},
   year =3D      2000,
   month =3D     {July},
   address =3D   {Boston, MA},
   pages =3D     "349--356",
}
@inProceedings{Laskey01,
   author =3D    {Laskey, Kathryn B.},
   title =3D     {Hypothesis Management in Situation-Specific Network
Construction
},
   booktitle =3D {Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Conference on
Uncertainty
in Artificial Intelligence (UAI-01)},
   year =3D      2001,
   month =3D     {August},
   address =3D   {Seattle, WA},
   pages =3D     "301--309",
}

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