Modeling trust with uncertainty for open networks

Since trust relationships are uncertain in open networks, it is necessary to consider uncertainty when modeling trust. A novel trust model was proposed based on the cloud model, which was a useful tool to describe uncertain concept. Modeling trust with cloud, the proposed model could present trust degree and uncertainty degree in a uniform form. Based on such a definition of trust, algorithms to compute propagated trust clouds and aggregated trust clouds were proposed, which were needed in the case of trust reasoning. With simulation experiments, the proposed model was compared with the other two trust models. The results show that the cloud-based trust model performs much better in open networks, especially in helping entities to cooperate with each other.