The granular perspective as semantically enriched granulation hierarchy

One can granulate data and information in multiple ways to generate granulation hierarchies. What the characteristics of such hierarchies are and what consequences they have on levels of granularity is, however, left implicit. We propose an explicit representation of such additional information of granulation hierarchies and transform them to granular perspectives. Granular perspectives can be uniquely identified, hence, distinguished, by means of formally representing their semantics using a granulation criterion and type of granularity used for granulation. The granular perspectives are equipped with both a simple relation and with mereological relations to consistently relate them, thereby facilitating cross-granular querying. Given the premises, definitions, and proven properties, consequences for characterising levels of granularity within such perspectives are demonstrated.