tended to verify randomized, open, large, and com-
plex concurrent systems, including clinical reasoning
systems. We construct IHpCTL by combining and
integrating several previously established extensions
of the standard probabilistic temporal logic known
as probabilistic computation tree logic (pCTL) (Aziz
et al., 1995; Bianco and de Alfaro, 1995), which is
widely used for probabilistic model checking. As a
main contribution of this study, IHpCTL is shown
to be embeddable into pCTL and is relatively de-
cidable with respect to pCTL. This means that the
decidability of pCTL with certain probability mea-
sures implies the decidability of IHpCTL. These re-
sults indicate that we can effectively reuse the pre-
viously proposed pCTL model-checking algorithms
(Aziz et al., 1995; Bianco and de Alfaro, 1995) for
IHpCTL model checking.
We next explain pCTL and its probabilistic model-
checking framework. pCTL is an extension of the
standard temporal logic known as computation tree
logic (CTL) (Clarke and Emerson, 1981) for model
checking. It is obtained from CTL by adding the
probabilistic or probability operator P
≥x
. The formu-
las in the form of P
≥x
α are intended to be read as “the
probability of α holding in the future evolution of the
system is at least x.” pCTL was previously investi-
gated by Aziz et al. (Aziz et al., 1995) and Bianco and
de Alfaro (Bianco and de Alfaro, 1995). In (Bianco
and de Alfaro, 1995), pCTL was introduced to verify
the reliability properties and performances of the sys-
tems modeled by discrete Markov chains. In (Bianco
and de Alfaro, 1995), the complexities of model-
checking algorithms with respect to this logic were
clarified. In (Aziz et al., 1995), model-checking algo-
rithms for various extensions of the previous settings
of pCTL were proposed to verify probabilistic non-
deterministic concurrent systems. These algorithms
were shown to exhibit polynomial-time complexity
depending on the different sizes of the systems. The
main difference between the approaches of Aziz et al.
(Aziz et al., 1995) and Bianco and de Alfaro (Bianco
and de Alfaro, 1995) is the settings of the probability
measures in the probabilistic Kripke models of pCTL.
Although, as previously mentioned, pCTL and its
probabilistic model-checking framework are useful,
they are insufficient for handling open, large, and
complex concurrent systems such as very large and
complex cloud-based systems. Verifying these sys-
tems requires the handling of inconsistency-tolerant
reasoning. This is because in open and large concur-
rent systems, inconsistencies are inevitable and ap-
pear often (Chen and Wu, 2006). Verifying these sys-
tems also requires the handling of hierarchical reason-
ing, as complex concurrent systems are constructed
based on certain hierarchies (Kaneiwa and Kamide,
2011a). In addition, verifying clinical reasoning sys-
tems with complex disease ontologies, for example,
requires the handling of both inconsistency-tolerant
and hierarchical reasoning, as these types of systems
consist of both open data related to vague concepts
of symptoms and complex hierarchical structures of
disease ontologies (Kamide and Bernal J.P.A., 2019).
Thus, an extended logic with an extended model-
checking framework is needed that can also simul-
taneously handle inconsistency-tolerant, hierarchical,
and probabilistic reasoning.
For this direction, a few partial solutions were
obtained in some previous studies (Kamide and
Koizumi, 2015; Kamide and Koizumi, 2016; Kamide
and Yano, 2019; Kamide and Bernal J.P.A., 2019). An
inconsistency-tolerant (or paraconsistent) probabilis-
tic computation tree logic (PpCTL), which was ob-
tained from pCTL by adding the paraconsistent nega-
tion connective ∼, was developed in (Kamide and
Koizumi, 2015; Kamide and Koizumi, 2016) based
on a probability-measure-independent translation of
PpCTL to pCTL. A theorem for embedding PpCTL
into pCTL was proved using this translation and en-
tailed the relative decidability of PpCTL with respect
to pCTL. A hierarchical probabilistic computation
tree logic (HpCTL), which was obtained from pCTL
by adding the hierarchical (or sequence) modal oper-
ator [b], was developed in (Kamide and Yano, 2019)
based on a probability-measure-independent trans-
lation of HpCTL to pCTL. The same theorems as
those for PpCTL were obtained for HpCTL. A loca-
tive inconsistency-tolerant hierarchical probabilistic
computation tree logic (LIHpCTL), which is regarded
as an extension of both PpCTL and HpCTL with the
addition of the location operator [l
i
] introduced in
(N. Kobayashi and Yonezawa, 1999), was considered
in (Kamide and Bernal J.P.A., 2019).
However, the embedding and relative decidabil-
ity theorems for LIHpCTL proposed in (Kamide and
Bernal J.P.A., 2019) have not yet been proved, as
some technical difficulties remain. Thus, the objec-
tive of this study is to make progress in this direc-
tion. The current study proves the embedding and
relative decidability theorems for the proposed logic
IHpCTL, which is considered to be a modified ver-
sion of the location-operator-free subsystem of LIH-
pCTL. To prove these theorems, we need to overcome
some technical difficulties in formalizing and defin-
ing a satisfaction relation and proving some key lem-
mas for the embedding theorem. For example, some
previously proposed extended CTLs with the hierar-
chical modal operator [b] (see, for example, (Kamide
and Kaneiwa, 2009; Kaneiwa and Kamide, 2011a;
Inconsistency-tolerant Hierarchical Probabilistic Computation Tree Logic and Its Application to Model Checking
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