• PhD defended on :
  • Jun 5, 2015 • Salle des thèse

Summary

This thesis investigates the dynamics of beliefs and uncertainty management in DL-Lite, one of the most important lightweight description logics. The first part of the thesis concerns the problem of handling uncertainty in DL-Lite. First, we propose an extension of the main fragments of DL-Lite to deal with the uncertainty associated with axioms using a possibility theory framework without additional extra computational costs. We then study the revision of possibilistic DL-Lite bases when a new piece of information is available. Lastly, we propose a min-based assertional merging operator when assertions of ABox are provided by several sources of information having different levels of priority. The second part of the thesis concerns the problem of inconsistency handling in flat and prioritized DL-Lite knowledge bases. We first propose how to reason from a flat DL-Lite knowledge base, with a multiple ABox, which can be either issued from multiple information sources or resulted from revising DL-Lite knowledge bases. This is done by introducing the notions of modifiers and inference strategies. The combination of modifiers plus inference strategies can be mapped out in order to provide a principled and exhaustive list of techniques for inconsistency management. We then give an approach based on selecting multiple repairs using a cardinality-based criterion, and we identified suitable strategies for handling inconsistency in the prioritized case. Lastly, we perform a comparative analysis, followed by experimental studies, of the proposed inconsistency handling techniques.

Jury

  • Anthony HUNTER - Professor, University College London. Rapporteur.
  • Henri PRADE - Directeur de recherche CNRS, IRIT Toulouse. Rapporteur.
  • Salem BENFERHAT - Professeur, Université d’Artois. Directeur.
  • Sylvain LAGRUE - Maître de conférences (HDR), Université d’Artois.
  • Marie-Laure MUGNIER - Professeur, Université de Montpellier 2.
  • Odile PAPINI - Professeur, Université d’Aix Marseille.
  • Ramón PINO PÉREZ - Professor, University of the Andes.
  • Karim TABIA - Maître de conférences, Université d’Artois.