UFO: uncertainty and fuzziness in an object-oriented model

The authors present a method for coping with the uncertainty and fuzziness that cause problems in handling information. As these two concepts carry different semantic meanings, they distinguish between them by representing fuzzy information as conjunctive fuzzy sets and uncertainty by means of generalized fuzzy sets. An object-oriented methodology is chosen because it offers an excellent framework for handling uncertainty in a way completely transparent to the user. This treatment of uncertainty in a fuzzy object-oriented environment is well-suited to databases; hence examples from this field are selected. Genealogical databases, where uncertain information is very common, and where information is continuously updated, are used as a frame of reference. The proposed model also allows storage of as much information about uncertain objects as possible