A Formal Framework for Representing Diagnosis Strategies in Model-Based Diagnosis Systems

Wolfgang Nejdl, Peter Fröhlich, and Michael Schroeder

Abstract

Recent work has pointed out that diagnosis strategies are a necessary tool for the diagnosis of complex systems. Nevertheless, though current diagnosis systems are able to use explicit system models, their representation of diagnosis strategies is only implicit. In this paper we introduce a formal meta--language to express strategic knowledge in an explicit way. This language is sufficient to formalize all strategies introduced in previous work, and extends previous diagnosis strategies by the integration of empirical knowledge and by explicit statements about dependencies between actions. We provide a declarative semantics for this language and an architecture for implementation.

Keywords: Model-based diagnosis, Diagnosis Strategies

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