Dissertation Abstract: Taming Exact Inference in Temporal Probabilistic Relational Models

Abstract Processes in our world are of a temporal probabilistic relational nature. An epidemic is an example of such a process. This dissertation abstract uses the scenario of an epidemic to illustrate the lifted dynamic junction tree algorithm (LDJT), which is a temporal probabilistic relational inference algorithm. More specifically, we argue that existing propositional temporal probabilistic inference algorithms are not suited to model an epidemic, i.e., without accounting for the relational part, and present how LDJT uses the relational aspect. Additionally, we illustrate how LDJT preserves groups of indistinguishable objects over time and have a look at LDJT from a theoretical side.