Structured utility models are essential for the effective representation and elicitation of complex multiattribute utility functions. Generalized additive independence (GAI) models provide an attractive structural model of user preferences, offering a balanced tradeoff between simplicity and applicability. While representation and inference with such models is reasonably well understood, elicit...

Requirement elicitation is an important activity in early requirement engineering. Several wellknown approaches and goal models have been developed to deal with requirement elicitation. The i* goal model is used to represent the socio-technical domains and can be used for analysis in early requirement analysis. The elicitation process is complicated by the incomplete and imprecise input data av...

The threshold stimulus intensities for elicitation of the two EMG components of the eyeblink reflex were determined in human subjects under different conditions. In the first experiment subjects sat with eyelids open and were not warned about reflex elicitation. The threshold of R1 was substantially greater than that of R2. In four additional experiments subjects (a) triggered the eliciting sti...

User preferences for automated assistance often vary widely, depending on the situation, and quality or presentation of help. Developing effective models to learn individual preferences online requires domain models that associate observations of user behavior with their utility functions, which in turn can be constructed using utility elicitation techniques. However, most elicitation methods a...

Combinatorial exchanges arise naturally in multi-agent systems that execute hierarchically decomposed tasks, when the agents have uncertainty about each other’s tasks and each other’s capability of handling tasks. In a combinatorial exchange, the information is aggregated to one party who then decides the task allocation among the agents. Unfortunately, such exchanges can require that bidders c...

Requirements engineering (RE) is often seen as an essential facet in software development. It is a vital process before each project starts. In the context of systems engineering, an understanding and application of systems theory and practice is also relevant to RE. The contexts in which RE takes place habitually involve human activities. Therefore, RE needs to be sensitive to how people perce...

BACKGROUND Environmental health impact assessments often have to deal with substantial uncertainties. Typically, the knowledge-base is limited with incomplete, or inconsistent evidence and missing or ambiguous data. Consulting experts can help to identify and address uncertainties. METHODS Formal expert elicitation is a structured approach to systematically consult experts on uncertain issues...

Elicitation is a commonly used tool to extract viable information from experts. The information that is held by the expert is extracted and a probabilistic representation of this knowledge is constructed. A promising avenue in psychological research is to incorporated experts' prior knowledge in the statistical analysis. Systematic reviews on elicitation literature however suggest that it might...

Abstract: elicitation of user needs is a crucial step before medical device design and purchasing. Nonetheless, user needs elicitation is often based on qualitative methods, whose findings are difficult to integrate into medical information in decision making. This paper describes an application of AHP to support user need elicitation in a public hospital. The case study is the acquisition and ...