Embedding Tolerance Relations in Formal Concept Analysis: An Application in Information Fusion

摘要

This paper shows how to embed a similarity relation between complex descriptions in concept lattices. We formalize similarity by a tolerance relation: objects are grouped within a same concept when having similar descriptions, extending the ability of FCA to deal with complex data. We propose two different approaches. A first classical manner defines a discretization procedure. A second way consists in representing data by pattern structures, from which a pattern concept lattice can be constructed directly. In this case, considering a tolerance relation can be mathematically defined by a projection in a meet-semi-lattice. This allows to use concept lattices for their knowledge representation and reasoning abilities without transforming data. We show finally that resulting lattices are useful for solving information fusion problems.