A possibility theory-based approach to the handling of uncertain relations between temporal points

Uncertain relations between temporal points are represented by means of possibility distributions over the three basic relations "smaller than", "equal to", and "greater than". Operations for computing inverse relations, for composing relations, for combining relations coming from different sources and pertaining to the same temporal points, or for representing negative information, are defined. An illustrative example of representing and reasoning with uncertain temporal relations is given. This paper shows how possibilistic temporal uncertainty can be handled in the setting of point algebra. Moreover, the paper emphasizes the advantages of the possibilistic approach over a probabilistic approach previously proposed. This work does for the temporal point algebra what the authors previously did for the temporal interval algebra.