Making Informed Decisions with Provenance and Argumentation Schemes

Intelligence analysis is the process of reasoning about information in order to produce hypothetical explanations for a situation. In this process, it is fundamental to assess how, when, and where this information has been elaborated. A model of provenance can capture this contextual information. Provenance data inevitably affects the identification of plausible conclusions, thus, it must be introduced in the reasoning process. In this paper, we propose a model of argument schemes that allows software agents to explore provenance for improving the information assessment. Argument schemes present the essential elements of provenance that warrant the credibility of the information. Schemes are also used to establish preferences between pieces of information according to different provenance criteria, such as timeliness and reliability. The introduction of schemes about provenance facilitates the decision-making process by providing a rational method to assess the credibility of a piece of information and to resolve conflicting information.