Abstract
Our main objective is to propose a recently-developed representational formalism, the Evolving Transformation System (ETS), as a general structural tool for decision and risk analysis, as opposed to the conventional numeric tools. We believe ETS to be the first formalism developed specifically with the goal of (properly understood) structural representation in mind.
We outline the use of ETS in the representation of an “insider's view” of a hypothetical terrorist plot. The example should be treated as that of an internal view of a generic planning process. We emphasize that the same tools can be used for modeling the external view of a decision process (and its execution).
The “atomic” representational unit of ETS is a structured event, and sequences of such events form processes that represent real human (including business) activities consisting of a series of various human actions. Each such action can be viewed structurally as an event transforming several “incoming” information processes into some “outgoing” information processes. Once the ETS concept of a class of (similar) processes is introduced, any process from that class can then be viewed as composed, in a class-specific manner, out of some simpler processes belonging to the constituent classes. Thus, a purchase process is, on the one hand, an element of the class of structurally similar purchase processes, while on the other hand, is a building-block of a larger business process, structurally fitting into it in a modular manner. Moreover, the concept of class in the formalism is introduced in such a way as to allow one – having constructed a class description, or, more formally, class representation – to predict/anticipate the overall structure of any process from that class.
It should become clear that the proposed framework could easily be adapted to address a broad range of needs, including decision modeling and analysis, anticipation of possible outcomes, various kinds of monitoring including surveillance, etc.