Hypothesis Management Framework: a flexible design pattern for belief networks in decision support systems

This article discusses a design pattern for building belief networks for application domains in which causal models are hard to construct. In this approach we pursue a modular belief network structure that is easily extended by the users themselves, while remaining reliable for decision support. The Hypothesis Management Framework proposed here is a pragmatic attempt to enable analysts and domain experts to construct and maintain a belief network that can be used to support decision making, without requiring advanced knowledge engineering skills.