Ontology-driven possibilistic reference fusion

Abstract

It often happens that different references (i.e. data descriptions), possibly coming from different heterogeneous data sources, concern the same real world entity. In such cases, it is necessary: (i) to detect, through reconciliation methods, whether different data descriptions refer to the same real world entity and (ii) to fuse them into a unique representation. Here we assume the reference reconciliation is solved, and we propose a fusion method based on possibility theory, able to cope with uncertainty and with ontological knowledge. An implementation using W3C standards is provided. Rising from the fusion process, an ontology enrichment procedure is proposed to complete the global ontology. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.