Information, Uncertainty and Fusion

As we stand at the precipice of the twenty first century the ability to capture and transmit copious amounts of information is clearly a defining feature of the human race. In order to increase the value of this vast supply of information we must develop means for effectively processing it. Newly emerging disciplines such as Information Engineering and Soft Computing are being developed in order to provide the tools required. Conferences such as the International Conference on Information Processing and ManagementofUncertainty in Knowledge-based Systems (IPMU) are being held to provide forums in which researchers can discuss the latest developments. The recent IPMU conference held at La Sorbonne in Paris brought together some of the world's leading experts in uncertainty and information fusion. In this volume we have included a selection ofpapers from this conference. What should be clear from looking at this volume is the number of different ways that are available for representing uncertain information. This variety in representational frameworks is a manifestation of the different types of uncertainty that appear in the information available to the users. Perhaps, the representation with the longest history is probability theory. This representation is best at addressing the uncertainty associated with the occurrence of different values for similar variables. This uncertainty is often described as randomness. Rough sets can be seen as a type of uncertainty that can deal effectively with lack of specificity, it is a powerful tool for manipulating granular information.