Fuzz-TIME: an intelligent system for managing fuzzy temporal information
International Journal of Intelligent Computing and Cybernetics
ISSN: 1756-378X
Article publication date: 12 June 2017
Abstract
Purpose
Time modeling is a crucial feature in many application domains. However, temporal information often is not crisp, but is subjective and fuzzy. The purpose of this paper is to address the issue related to the modeling and handling of imperfection inherent to both temporal relations and intervals.
Design/methodology/approach
On the one hand, fuzzy extensions of Allen temporal relations are investigated and, on the other hand, extended temporal relations to define the positions of two fuzzy time intervals are introduced. Then, a database system, called Fuzzy Temporal Information Management and Exploitation (Fuzz-TIME), is developed for the purpose of processing fuzzy temporal queries.
Findings
To evaluate the proposal, the authors have implemented a Fuzz-TIME system and created a fuzzy historical database for the querying purpose. Some demonstrative scenarios from history domain are proposed and discussed.
Research limitations/implications
The authors have conducted some experiments on archaeological data to show the effectiveness of the Fuzz-TIME system. However, thorough experiments on large-scale databases are highly desirable to show the behavior of the tool with respect to the performance and time execution criteria.
Practical implications
The tool developed (Fuzz-TIME) can have many practical applications where time information has to be dealt with. In particular, in several real-world applications like history, medicine, criminal and financial domains, where time is often perceived or expressed in an imprecise/fuzzy manner.
Social implications
The social implications of this work can be expected, more particularly, in two domains: in the museum to manage, exploit and analysis the piece of information related to archives and historic data; and in the hospitals/medical organizations to deal with time information inherent to data about patients and diseases.
Originality/value
This paper presents the design and characterization of a novel and intelligent database system to process and manage the imperfection inherent to both temporal relations and intervals.
Keywords
Citation
Gammoudi, A., Hadjali, A. and Ben Yaghlane, B. (2017), "Fuzz-TIME: an intelligent system for managing fuzzy temporal information", International Journal of Intelligent Computing and Cybernetics, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 200-222. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJICC-09-2016-0036
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited