Advancing Multi-Context Systems by Inconsistency Management

Abstract: Multi-Context Systems are an expressive formalism to model (possibly) non-monotonic information exchange between heterogeneous knowledge bases. Such information exchange, however, often comes with unforseen side-effects leading to violation of constraints, making the system inconsistent, and thus unusable. Although there are many approaches to assess and repair a single inconsistent knowledge base, the heterogeneous nature of Multi-Context Systems poses problems which have not yet been addressed in a satisfying way: How to identify and explain a inconsistency that spreads over multiple knowledge bases with different logical formalisms (e.g., logic programs and ontologies)? What are the causes of inconsistency if inference/information exchange is non-monotonic (e.g., absent information as cause)? How to deal with inconsistency if access to knowledge bases is restricted (e.g., companies exchange information, but do not allow arbitrary modifications to their knowledge bases)? Many traditional approaches solely aim for a consistent system, but automatic removal of inconsistency is not always desireable. Therefore a human operator has to be supported in finding the erroneous parts contributing to the inconsistency. In my thesis those issues will be adressed mainly from a foundational perspective, while our research project also provides algorithms and prototype implementations.