Release 8.0

March 2014

The main new feature of this release is the introduction of Dynamic time-sliced Bayesian Networks.

Functionality to support reasoning about dynamic time-sliced systems using Bayesian networks is introduced as part of version 8.0. This introduces the notions of Dynamic time-sliced Bayesian Networks (DBNs) with a sliding time-window as well as operations on this time-window including belief update in the time window, forecasting beyond the time window and moving the time window forward. DBNs make it possible for the user to represent a dynamic time-sliced system as a model in HUGIN software. A DBN is specified using a new type of node referred to as a temporal clone. A temporal clone of a node is a representation of the corresponding node at the previous time step. Using temporal clones it is possible to specify a transition probability distribution from one time step to the next time step reflecting the dynamics of the (time-sliced) system represented in the model.

HUGIN Graphical User Interface v8.0

The HUGIN Graphical User Interface has been improved with various new features. These include:

  • Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBNs) including a number of supporting operations

  • Link groups have been introduced. Link groups are similar to node groups. The user can define a set of link groups where each group has a specific color. This makes it possible for the user to color code links in a network

  • A Network Statistics Dialog has been introduction. It shows the number of nodes, edges, parameters et cetera in a network

  • It is now possible to define expressions to generate the mean and variance values of CG nodes.

  • Other minor improvements.

Finally, efforts have been made into improving the performance of the HUGIN Graphical User Interface.

HUGIN Decision Engine v8.0

The HUGIN Decision Engine has been extended with the following features:

  • Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBNs) including a number of supporting operations. DBNs are available through all Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) except the Web Service API.

  • Nodes of type Interval can now have intervals where the lower and upper values are the same (zero width intervals or point intervals). This is useful in cases where it is important to define a point value of an Interval node.

  • Support for Visual Studio 2013

  • Web Service API refactoring. Internal parts of the Web Service API have been refactored to improve performance of this API.

  • Optimization features introduced in JavaScript for HUGIN web service API include

    • A script engine is now available inside the HUGIN web service host process,

    • Remote procedure calls to the host process embedded script engine, and

    • Support for batching function calls with side effects into a single HTTP request.