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International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security

SAFECOMP 2014: Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security pp 15–26Cite as

Representing Confidence in Assurance Case Evidence

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9338))

Abstract

When evaluating assurance cases, being able to capture the confidence one has in the individual evidence nodes is crucial, as these values form the foundation for determining the confidence one has in the assurance case as a whole. Human opinions are subjective, oftentimes with uncertainty—it is difficult to capture an opinion with a single probability value. Thus, we believe that a distribution best captures a human opinion such as confidence. Previous work used a doubly-truncated normal distribution or a Dempster-Shafer theory-based belief mass to represent confidence in the evidence nodes, but we argue that a beta distribution is more appropriate. The beta distribution models a variety of shapes and we believe it provides an intuitive way to represent confidence. Furthermore, there exists a duality between the beta distribution and subjective logic, which can be exploited to simplify mathematical calculations. This paper is the first to apply this duality to assurance cases.

This work has been partially supported by NSF grants CNS-0931931 and CNS-1035715.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA

    Lian Duan, Sanjai Rayadurgam & Mats P. E. Heimdahl

  2. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

    Oleg Sokolsky & Insup Lee

Authors
  1. Lian Duan
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  2. Sanjai Rayadurgam
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  3. Mats P. E. Heimdahl
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  4. Oleg Sokolsky
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  5. Insup Lee
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lian Duan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Floor Koornneef

  2. University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, United Kingdom

    Coen van Gulijk

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Duan, L., Rayadurgam, S., Heimdahl, M.P.E., Sokolsky, O., Lee, I. (2015). Representing Confidence in Assurance Case Evidence. In: Koornneef, F., van Gulijk, C. (eds) Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security. SAFECOMP 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9338. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24249-1_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24249-1_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-24248-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-24249-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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