Minimality and non-determinism in multi-context systems

Abstract

Multi-context systems can be used to represent contextual information and inter-contextual information flow. We show that the local model semantics of a multi-context system is completely determined by the information that is obtained when simulating the information flow specified by the system, in such a way that a minimal amount of information is deduced at each step of the simulation. The multi-context system framework implicitly presupposes that information flow is deterministic. In many natural situations, this is not a valid assumption. We propose an extension of the framework to account for non-determinism and provide an algorithm to efficiently compute the meaning of non-deterministic systems. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.