A Monotonic Formalism for Events and Systems of Events

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Abstract
The aim of this paper is to provide a basis for a theory of events and systems of events that can be used for reasoning about arbitrarily complex dynamic domains involving multiple agents. The approach is based on a model of events that explicitly represents the domain of influence of each event. By restricting the scope of an event's domain of influence, most of the problems that have seriously troubled the more conventional state-transition models of events can be avoided. The effect of performing events, either in isolation or in parallel with other events, is described. A formalism is developed that allows the reasoning about arbitrarily complex behaviours. It is shown how this formalism avoids the frame problem yet allows the ramifications of any given event occurrence to be modelled without the introduction of non-monotonic mechanisms. Finally, the notion of system is introduced to provide a compositional means for reasoning about complex domains

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