Modern civilization relies on a functioning information infrastructure. As a result, dependability has become a central issue in all disciplines of systems engineering and software architecture.Theories, methods and tools that help to master the problems encountered in the design process and the management of operations are therefore of utmost importance for the future of information and communication technology.

The present volume documents the results of a research program on Dependable Information and Communication Systems (DICS). The members of the project met in two workshops organized by the Hasler Foundation. This state-of-the-art survey contains 3 overview articles identifying major issues of dependability and presenting the latest solutions, as well as 10 carefully selected and revised papers depicting the research results originating from those workshops. The first workshop took place in Munchenwiler, Switzerland, in March 2004, and the second workshop, which marked the conclusion of the projects, in Lowenberg, Switzerland, in October 2005. The papers are organized in topical sections on surveys, dependable software, dependable computing, and dependable networks.
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Information usually comes in pieces, from different sources. It refers to different, but related questions. Therefore information needs to be aggregated and focused onto the relevant questions. Considering combination and focusing of information as the relevant operations leads to a generic algebraic structure for information. This book introduces and studies information from this algebraic point of view. Algebras of information provide the necessary abstract framework for generic inference procedures. They allow the application of these procedures to a large variety of different formalisms for representing information. At the same time they permit a generic study of conditional independence, a property considered as fundamental for knowledge presentation. Information algebras provide a natural framework to define and study uncertain information. Uncertain information is represented by random variables that naturally form information algebras. This theory also relates to probabilistic assumption-based reasoning in information systems and is the basis for the belief functions in the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence.

The subject of the book is an approach to the modeling of and the reasoning under uncertainty. It develops the Dempster-Shafer Theory as a theory of the reliability of reasoning with uncertain arguments. A particular interest of this approach is that it yields a new synthesis and integration of logic and probability theory. The reader will benefit from a new view at uncertainty modeling which extends classical probability theory.

This volume constitutes the 48 full refereed research papers accepted for presentation at the Third European Conference on Symbolic and Quantitative Approaches to Reasoning and Uncertainty, ECSQARU '95, held in Fribourg, Switzerland in July 1995 under the sponsorship of the DRUMS consortium (ESPRIT II BRA 6156).
In recent years, it has become apparent that an important part of the theory of AI is concerned with reasoning on the basis of uncertain, vague, incomplete, or inconsistent information. A variety of nonclassical formalisms, both symbolic and numerical, have been developed and are addressed in this volume; among them are nonmonotonic and modal logics, fuzzy sets, possibility theory, believe functions, evidence theory, dynamic models, and Bayesian networks.

Anlasslich des 65. Geburtstages von Hans Paul Kunzi haben sich Weggefahrten, Mitarbeiter und Schuler aus den Jahren seines Wirkens als Hochschullehrer zusammengetan, um wenigstens punktuell aufzu zeigen, wie und wohin in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten verschiedene theoretische und empirische Entwicklungen verlaufen sind, die der Jubilar zumindest in der Schweiz und zu einem guten Teil auch daruber hinaus mitaufgebaut und in den Anfangen beeinflusst hat. Zu diesem Vorhaben fanden die Herausgeber vielseitige Unterstutzung. Zunachst von den beteiligten Autoren, die mit spontanen Zusagen und in vorbildlicher Weise ihre Beitrage termingerecht fertiggestellt haben. Daruber hinaus hat ein groesserer Kreis von Persoenlichkeiten mit Rat und Tat die Entstehung der Schrift gefoerdert, wobei besonders auch auf ein grosses Entgegenkommen des Springer-Verlages zu verweisen ist. Allen moechten wir fur die Hilfe aufrichtig danken. Angesichts der Tatsache, dass Hans Paul Kunzi bereits vor fast zwei Jahrzehnten seine wissenschaftliche Laufbahn zugunsten einer anderen Verpflichtung aufgegeben hat, liegt die Frage nahe, warum wir -nach wie vor der akademischen Welt verbunden -heute noch von der Persoenlichkeit Kunzi beeindruckt sind. Dazu sei kurz auf sein damaliges Wirken als Professor an der Universitat Zurich und an der ETH Zurich zuruckgeblendet.

Human Machine Interaction, or more commonly Human Computer Interaction, is the study of interaction between people and computers. It is an interdisciplinary field, connecting computer science with many other disciplines such as psychology, sociology and the arts.

The present volume documents the results of the MMI research program on Human Machine Interaction involving 8 projects (selected from a total of 80 proposals) funded by the Hasler Foundation between 2005 and 2008.

These projects were also partially funded by the associated universities and other third parties such as the Swiss National Science Foundation.

This state-of-the-art survey begins with three chapters giving overviews of the domains of multimodal user interfaces, interactive visualization, and mixed reality. These are followed by eight chapters presenting the results of the projects, grouped according to the three aforementioned themes.