IFSA 2007 World Congress

Cancun, Mexico, June 18-21, 2007

SPECIAL SESSION 3SS

The application of fuzzy logic and soft computing in flexible querying

ORGANIZERS Guy De Tré, [email-masked]

Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

Slawomir Zadrozny,  [email-masked]

Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland

SCOPE: Flexible querying is meant to enhance the querying facilities traditionally offered by  information systems. The primary aim is to provide for the human-consistency in the querying process, i.e., to take into account the imperfect nature typical for the user requirements expressed in a query.  This is usually considered in a broader perspective of handling various forms of imperfect information, both in queries as well as in data stored by information systems. Such an imperfection comprises vagueness, uncertainty, incompleteness, inapplicability etc.

Flexible querying may be considered with respect to structured, semi-structured and unstructured information maintained by the information systems. The first case has seemingly the longest tradition of research in the fuzzy logic and soft computing community. Notably, the querying of the relational and object-oriented databases attracted many researchers. However the other cases were also addressed in many papers concerning, e.g., the flexible querying of the XML, multimedia or textual data. Notably, the latter area, the information retrieval, poses many problems referring to the concepts best modeled using methods of the fuzzy logic and soft computing.

In recent years there is an increased interest in flexible querying systems because of the growing needs for new technologies to effectively and efficiently query electronic information sources as, e.g., databases and the World Wide Web. These sources comprise rapidly growing amount of information collected in companies, public administration, individuals etc. The wealth of widely available information offers an exciting opportunity for the development of intelligent, flexible querying systems based on fuzzy logic and soft computing.

The objective of the special session is to provide an opportunity to exchange ideas on the application of fuzzy logic and soft computing in flexible querying. The session aims at providing a forum for the discussion of recent advances in this research field and to offer an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to identify new promising research directions.

The organizers welcome contributions that report on the application of:

-         fuzzy sets theory

-         fuzzy logic

-         soft computing

within the fields of (but not limited to)

-         classical and fuzzy databases

-         information retrieval

-         semi-structured data

-         content based information retrieval

-         geographical information systems

-         multimedia information systems

-         flexible querying over the Internet

We encourage submissions of papers that report on theoretical advances in these core areas as well as papers that deal with some practical insights resulting from experiments or implementations.

Proposed contribution should be sent by e-mail to the organizers of the session by October 16, 2006. The same deadlines as for the regular papers to be submitted to the IFSA 2007 World Congress will be observed. Submitted papers must comply to the IFSA 2007 World Congress guidelines for submission. All submitted papers will be refereed by experts in the field.

The accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. The authors of selected papers will be invited to additionally prepare extended versions of their papers to be published in a special issue of the “Fuzzy Sets and Systems” journal. The submission details will be announced later.