An introduction to reasoning over qualitative multi-attribute preferences

TY - JOUR

T1 - An introduction to reasoning over qualitative multi-attribute preferences

AU - Nunes, Ingrid

AU - Miles, Simon

AU - Luck, Michael

AU - de Lucena, Carlos J. P.

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - Research on preferences has significantly increased in recent years, as it involves not only many subproblems to be investigated, such as elicitation, representation, and reasoning, but has also been the target of different research areas, for example, artificial intelligence and databases. In particular, much work has focused on qualitative preferences, because these are closer to the way people express their preferences in comparison with quantitative preferences. Against this background, a large number of approaches have been proposed, associated with heterogeneous areas, so that these approaches are usually just compared with those of the same area. In response, we present in this paper a survey of approaches to qualitative multi-attribute preference reasoning, covering different research areas. We introduce selected approaches that propose different techniques and algorithms, which take as input qualitative multi-attribute preference statements following a particular structure specified by the approach. We analyse each approach in a systematic way and discuss their commonalities and limitations.

AB - Research on preferences has significantly increased in recent years, as it involves not only many subproblems to be investigated, such as elicitation, representation, and reasoning, but has also been the target of different research areas, for example, artificial intelligence and databases. In particular, much work has focused on qualitative preferences, because these are closer to the way people express their preferences in comparison with quantitative preferences. Against this background, a large number of approaches have been proposed, associated with heterogeneous areas, so that these approaches are usually just compared with those of the same area. In response, we present in this paper a survey of approaches to qualitative multi-attribute preference reasoning, covering different research areas. We introduce selected approaches that propose different techniques and algorithms, which take as input qualitative multi-attribute preference statements following a particular structure specified by the approach. We analyse each approach in a systematic way and discuss their commonalities and limitations.

KW - preferences

KW - reasoning

U2 - 10.1017/S0269888915000016

DO - 10.1017/S0269888915000016

M3 - Article

SN - 0269-8889

JO - KNOWLEDGE ENGINEERING REVIEW

JF - KNOWLEDGE ENGINEERING REVIEW

ER -