Uncertain lightweight ontologies in a product-based possibility theory framework

Abstract

This paper investigates an extension of lightweight ontologies, encoded here in DL-Lite languages, to the product-based possibility theory framework. We first introduce the language (and its associated semantics) used for representing uncertainty in lightweight ontologies. We show that, contrarily to a min-based possibilistic DL-Lite, query answering in a product-based possibility theory is a hard task. We provide equivalent transformations between the problem of computing an inconsistency degree (the key notion in reasoning from a possibilistic DL-Lite knowledge base) and the weighted maximum 2-Horn SAT problem. The last part of the paper provides an encoding of the problem of computing inconsistency degree in product-based possibility DL-Lite as a weighted set cover problem and the use of a greedy algorithm to compute an approximate value of the inconsistency degree. This encoding allows us to provide an approximate algorithm for answering instance checking queries in product-based possibilistic DL-Lite. Experimental studies show the quality of the approximate algorithms for both inconsistency degree computation and instance checking queries.