Uncertainty in Knowledge Bases

The management and processing of uncertain information hasshown itself to be a crucial issue in the development ofintelligent systems, beginning withits appearance in thesuch systems as Mycin and Prospector. The papers in thisvolume reflect the current range of interests or researchersin thefield. Currently, the major approaches to uncertaintyinclude fuzzy set theory, probabilistic methods,mathematical theory of evidence, non-standardlogics such asdefault reasoning, and possibility theory.The initial part of the volume is devoted to papers dealingwith the foundations of these approaches, where recentattempts have been made to develop systems combiningmultiple approaches. A significant part of the book looks atthe management of uncertainty in a number of theparadigmatic domainsof intelligent systems such as expertsystems, decision making, databases, image processing, andreasoning networks.The papers are extended versions of presentations at thethird international conference on information processing andmanagement of uncertainty in knowledge-based systems. Theproceedings of the two preceding IPMU conferences appear asLNCS 286 and LNCS 313.