Near Sets in Assessing Conflict Dynamics within a Perceptual System Framework

The problem considered in this chapter is how to assess different perceptions of changing socio-technical conflicts. Our approach to the solution to this problem of assessing conflict dynamics is to consider negotiation views within the context of perceptual information systems. Briefly, perceptual information systems (succinctly, perceptual systems) are real-valued, total, deterministic information systems. This particular form of an information system is a variant of the deterministic information system model introduced by Zdzisław Pawlak during the early 1980s. This leads to a near set approach to evaluating perceptual granules derived from conflict situations considered in the context of perceptual systems. A perceptual granule is a set of perceptual objects originating from observations of objects in the physical world. Conflict situations typically result from different sets of viewpoints (perceptions) about issues under negotiation. Perceptual systems provide frameworks for representing and reasoning about different perceptions of socio-technical conflicts. Reasoning about conflict dynamics is made possible with nearness relations and tolerance perceptual near sets used to define a measure of nearness. Several approaches to the analysis of conflict situations are presented in this paper, namely, conflict graphs, approximation spaces and risk patterns. An illustrative example of a requirements scope negotiation for an automated lighting system is presented. The contribution of this chapter is a new way of representing and reasoning about conflicts in the context of requirements engineering with near set theory. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-324-1.ch008