Certainty closure: A framework for reliable constraint reasoning with uncertainty

Abstract

Constraint problems with incomplete or erroneous data are often simplified to tractable deterministic models, or modified using error correction methods, with the aim of seeking a solution. However, this can lead us to solve the wrong problem because of the approximations made. Such an outcome is of little help to a user who expects the right problem to be tackled and reliable information returned. The certainty closure framework we present aims to provide the user with reliable insight by: (1) enclosing the uncertainty using what is known for sure about the data, to guarantee that the true problem is contained in the model so described, (2) deriving a closure, a set of possible solutions to the uncertain constraint problem. In this paper we first demonstrate the benefits of reliable constraint reasoning on two different case studies, and then generalise our approaches into a formal framework. © Springer-Verlag 2003.