Unifying Time and Uncertainty for Diagnosis 1

Existing models of diagnosis have not uni ed the notions of time, uncertainty and abduction which are necessary in domains such as clinical diagnosis, dynamic systems modeling, and fault diagnosis. We present a new approach which models information through linear constraints and nd that many aspects of our knowledge-base and inferencing mechanism are naturally suited towards these constraints. Furthermore, this approach properly subsumes existing abductive and temporal models and provides a precise framework for explanatory reasoning. 2