Cameron MacKenzie is leading a workshop on Influence Diagrams on Sunday before the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) Annual meeting on December 8. Influence diagrams are an excellent tool to model risk and uncertainties in defense problems. The workshop will be geared towards those people with little exposure to using influence diagrams and who want to know more about how to use them as modeling tools. There is a reduced fee for students ($50), so if you have a student who is attending the SRA annual meeting and want him or her to gain some knowledge on how to build and solve influence diagrams, this workshop is perfect. The workshop will include some examples related to defense and security and explore how influence diagrams can capture adversarial actions.
Influence diagrams, also known as Bayesian belief networks, are extremely useful tools in risk analysis. They can incorporate several uncertain factors, combine data and expert opinion, and facilitate Bayesian analysis to update probabilities. However, many risk professionals have little-to-no knowledge about influence diagrams or know how to create an influence diagram to calculate the probability of a risk or the consequences that may arise from the risk. This workshop will teach attendees about influence diagrams by beginning with the basic shapes in influence diagrams and finishing by showing them how to use Netica software to solve influence diagrams.
This workshop will introduce the four basic node types for influence diagrams: uncertainty or chance nodes, decision nodes, deterministic nodes, and value nodes. Arcs or arrows can have different meanings depending on the type of nodes that they connect. Influence diagrams link different factors together via conditional probabilities. Attendees at the workshop will practice creating influence diagrams for different risks in engineering and infrastructure, security and defense, and ecology and climate. These examples will demonstrate risk problems with no decisions, with one decision, with sequential decisions, and for single and multiple criteria.
Although influence diagrams represent an easier method to visualize a problem than with a mathematical model, influence diagrams can be very difficult to solve without computer software. Attendees will learn how to use Netica software (which can be downloaded for free for limited-size problems) to solve influence diagrams and identify the optimal risk management alternative for complex, uncertain risks.
For more information about workshops and to register, go here.
For more information about this workshop, please contact Cameron MacKenzie camacken@iastate.edu
Regards,
SRA Security and Defense Specialty Group Leadership
