Using policies for information valuation to justify beliefs

This research presents a belief revision algorithm, based on intuitive policies for information valuation. Policies for valuation of information, based on characteristics of the information and the sources providing it, are delineated as guidelines for algorithm construction. In addition, each policy is traceably incorporated into the belief revision process to provide justification for calculated belief certainties. Finally, since modeling of information source trustworthiness can be complicated, significant effort is devoted to constructing these reputation models. Experimental results show that application of information valuation policies to belief revision yields significant improvement in belief accuracy and precision over no-policy or single-policy belief revision.