Relationships between generalized rough sets based on covering and reflexive neighborhood system

Abstract

Rough set theory is an important tool to deal with uncertainty, granularity and incompleteness of knowledge. The covering-based rough sets is one of the most important extensions of the classical Pawlak rough sets. In covering-based rough set theory, many types of rough sets were already defined in the literature. To find out the relationships among different types of covering-based rough sets and give an axiomatic definition is a very important issue. The generalized rough sets in neighborhood system is another important extension of the classical Pawlak rough sets. In this paper, we investigate relationships between covering-based rough sets and generalized rough sets in neighborhood system. Then, twenty-three types of the element based, the granule based and the subsystem based definitions of covering approximation operators are unified under the framework of generalized approximation operators in neighborhood systems. Moreover, properties of the generalized approximation operators in neighborhood systems are presented.