Stochastic reasoning with models of agent behavior

There is a constant need to reason about diverse cultures all over the world. For example, a health care organization anxious about the spread of diarrhea (or any other disease) in Kenya might wish to understand socio-economic-cultural-environmental aspects of Kenyan society that cause the diseases to spread extensively in some parts of the country and not in others. In most cases, the spread of diseases is not due to biological factors alone, but to social behaviors, environmental factors, and economic and educational aspects of the disease-stricken community. The problem we are tackling is that of how to best reason about actions using models of the behaviors of such agents (where "agent" means any entity). © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.