Linguistic Evaluation of Terrorist Scenarios: Example Application

摘要

In 2005, a group of international decision makers developed a manual process for evaluating terrorist scenarios. That process has been implemented in the approximate reasoning Java software tool, LinguisticBelief, released in FY2007. One purpose of this report is to show the flexibility of the LinguisticBelief tool to automate a custom model developed by others. LinguisticBelief evaluates combinations of linguistic variables using an approximate reasoning rule base. Each variable is comprised of fuzzy sets, and a rule base describes the reasoning on combinations of variables fuzzy sets. Uncertainty is considered and propagated through the rule base using the belief/plausibility measure. This report documents the evaluation and rank-ordering of several example terrorist scenarios for the existing process implemented in our software. LinguisticBelief captures and propagates uncertainty and allows easy development of an expanded, more detailed evaluation, neither of which is feasible using a manual evaluation process. In conclusion, the Linguistic-Belief tool is able to (1) automate an expert generated reasoning process for the evaluation of the risk of terrorist scenarios, including uncertainty, and (2) quickly evaluate and rank-order scenarios of concern using that process.