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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.TIME.2025.21

A Translation of Probabilistic Event Calculus into Markov Decision Processes (Short Paper)

Authors: Lyris Xu, Fabio Aurelio D'Asaro, and Luke Dickens

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 355, 32nd International Symposium on Temporal Representation and Reasoning (TIME 2025)

Abstract

Probabilistic Event Calculus (PEC) is a logical framework for reasoning about actions and their effects in uncertain environments, which enables the representation of probabilistic narratives and computation of temporal projections. The PEC formalism offers significant advantages in interpretability and expressiveness for narrative reasoning. However, it lacks mechanisms for goal-directed reasoning. Our work bridges this gap by developing a formal translation of PEC domains into Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), introducing the concept of "action-taking situations" to preserve PEC’s flexible action semantics. The resulting PEC-MDP formalism enables the extensive collection of algorithms and theoretical tools developed for MDPs to be applied to PEC’s interpretable narrative domains. We demonstrate how the translation supports both temporal reasoning tasks and objective-driven planning, with methods for mapping learned policies back into human-readable PEC representations, maintaining interpretability while extending PEC’s capabilities.

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Lyris Xu, Fabio Aurelio D'Asaro, and Luke Dickens. A Translation of Probabilistic Event Calculus into Markov Decision Processes (Short Paper). In 32nd International Symposium on Temporal Representation and Reasoning (TIME 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 355, pp. 21:1-21:5, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{xu_et_al:LIPIcs.TIME.2025.21,
  author =	{Xu, Lyris and D'Asaro, Fabio Aurelio and Dickens, Luke},
  title =	{{A Translation of Probabilistic Event Calculus into Markov Decision Processes}},
  booktitle =	{32nd International Symposium on Temporal Representation and Reasoning (TIME 2025)},
  pages =	{21:1--21:5},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-401-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{355},
  editor =	{Vidal, Thierry and Wa{\l}\k{e}ga, Przemys{\l}aw Andrzej},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.TIME.2025.21},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-244674},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.TIME.2025.21},
  annote =	{Keywords: Probabilistic Event Calculus, Markov Decision Processes, Temporal Projection, Narrative Reasoning}
}

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A Translation of Probabilistic Event Calculus into Markov Decision Processes (Short Paper)

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