In this paper, we propose an approach to handling uncertain time intervals and related qualitative relations, based on possibility theory. Four contributions are included in this approach. (1) Representing uncertain time intervals and related qualitative relations by extending the 4D-fluents approach with new ontological components. (2) Reasoning about uncertain time intervals by extending the Allen’s interval algebra. The resulting interval relations preserve the good properties of the original algebra. (3) Proposing an OWL 2 possibilistic temporal ontology based on 4D-fluents approach extension and Allen’s interval algebra extension. The proposed qualitative temporal relations are inferred via a set of SWRL rules. We validate our work by implementing a prototype based on this ontology. (4) Applying our work to PersonLink ontology and comparing the obtained results with our previous works.

Temporal data given by Alzheimer's patients are mostly uncertain. Many approaches have been proposed to handle certain temporal data and lack uncertain ones. This paper proposes an approach to represent and reason about quantitative time intervals and points and qualitative relations between them. It is suitable to handle certain and uncertain temporal data. It includes three parts. (1) The authors extend the 4D-fluents approach with certain components to represent certain and uncertain temporal data. (2) They extend the Allen's interval algebra to reason about certain and uncertain time intervals. They adapt these relations to relate a time interval and a time point, and two time points. All relations can be used for temporal reasoning by means of transitivity tables. (3) They propose a certain ontology based on the extensions. A prototype is implemented and integrated into an ontology-based memory prosthesis for Alzheimer's patients to handle uncertain data inputs. The evaluation proves the usefulness of the approach as all the inferences are well established and the precision results are promising.

In this paper, we propose an ontology-based approach for representing and reasoning about certain and uncertain temporal data. It handles temporal data in terms of quantitative time intervals and points and the qualitative relations between them (e.g., “before”). It includes three parts. (1) We extend the 4D-fluents approach with certain ontological components to represent the handled temporal data in OWL 2. (2) We extend the Allen’s interval algebra to reason about certain and uncertain time intervals. We adapt these relations to allow relating a time interval and a time point, and two time points. All relations can be used for temporal reasoning by means of transitivity tables. (3) The extended Allen’s algebra instantiates the 4D-fluents-based representation. Inferences are based on SWRL rules. Based on this ontology, a prototype is implemented and integrated into an ontology-based memory prosthesis for Alzheimer’s patients to handle certain and uncertain temporal data inputs.