Spatial Information Fusion: Coping with Uncertainty in Conceptual Structures

A logical formalism associating properties to space parcels in so-called attribute formulas, is proposed. Properties are related through the axioms of a taxonomy graph, and parcels through a partonomy graph. Attributive formulas establish relations between parcels and properties, and we use them to align different taxonomies, over a compatible partonomy, using Formal Concept Analysis. We discuss uncertainty in attributive formulas, which we extend in a possibilistic logic manner, including two modalities: true everywhere in the parcel, or at least true somewhere. Then, we discuss how our formalism can perform a possibilistic fusion on attributive formulas originating from independent sources, based on the aligned taxonomy. The issues may come from (a) the uncertainty of sources, (b) the possible inconsistency of fusion results, (c) the use of different partonomies that may not explicit the somewhere or everywhere reading associated to the information.