Rough Description Logics for Modeling Uncertainty in Instance Unification

Instance-unification is a prime example for uncertainty on the Semantic Web, as it is not always possible to automatically determine with absolute certainty whether two references denote the same object or not. In this paper, we present openacademia, a semantics-based system for the management of distributed bibliographic information collected from the Web, in which the Instance Unification problem is ubiquitous. Our tentative solution is Rough DL, a simple extension of classical Description Logics, which allows for approximations of vague concept. This shows that already a simple formalism for dealing with uncertain information in a qualitative way can provide an elegant solution to practical problems on the Semantic Web.