Fusion: general concepts and characteristics

Alain Appriou (1) , André Ayoun (2) , Salem Benferhat (3) , Philippe Besnard (3, 4) , Isabelle Bloch (5, 6) , Laurence Cholvy (7) , Roger M. Cooke (8) , Frederic Cuppens (7) , Didier Dubois (3, 4) , Hélène Fargier (3, 4) , Michel Grabisch (9) , R Kruse (10) , Antony Hunter (11) , Jérôme Lang (3) , S Moral (12) , Henri Prade (3, 4) , Alessandro Saffiotti (13) , Philippe Smets (14) , Claudio Sossai (15)

1 ONERA - The French Aerospace Lab [Châtillon]
2 THOMSON-CSF LCR - Thomson-CSF Laboratoire Central de Recherches
3 IRIT-ADRIA - Argumentation, Décision, Raisonnement, Incertitude et Apprentissage
4 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
5 LTCI - Laboratoire Traitement et Communication de l'Information
6 TSI - Département Traitement du Signal et des Images
7 ONERA - The French Aerospace Lab [Toulouse]
8 TU Delft - Delft University of Technology
9 SYSDEF - Systèmes d'aide à la décision et à la formation
10 OVGU - Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg = Otto-von-Guericke University [Magdeburg]
11 UCL - University College of London [London]
12 UGR - Universidad de Granada = University of Granada
13 Örebro University
14 IRIDIA - Institut de Recherches interdisciplinaires et de Développements en Intelligence Artificielle [Bruxelles]
15 ISIB - CNR - Istituto di Ingegneria Biomedica

The problem of combining pieces of information issued from several sources can be encountered in various fields of application. This paper aims at presenting the different aspects of information fusion in different domains, such as databases, regulations, preferences, sensor fusion, etc., at a quite general level. We first present different types of information encountered in fusion problems, and different aims of the fusion process. Then we focus on representation issues which are relevant when discussing fusion problems. An important issue is then addressed, the handling of conflicting information. We briefly review different domains where fusion is involved, and describe how the fusion problems are stated in each domain. Since the term fusion can have different, more or less broad, meanings, we specify later some terminology with respect to related problems, that might be included in a broad meaning of fusion. Finally we briefly discuss the difficult aspects of validation and evaluation.

Domaines: Intelligence artificielle [cs.AI]

Alain Appriou, André Ayoun, Salem Benferhat, Philippe Besnard, Isabelle Bloch, et al.. Fusion: general concepts and characteristics. International Journal of Intelligent Systems, 2001, 16 (10), pp.1107-1134. ⟨hal-03299687⟩