Multi-Context Systems with Preferences

Tiep Le, Tran Cao Son, Enrico Pontelli

Abstract: This paper presents an extension of the Multi-Context Systems (MCS) framework to allow the encoding of preferences at the level of the contexts. The work is motivated by the observation that a naive use of preference logics at a context level in an MCS can lead to undesirable outcomes, such as inconsistency of the MCS. To address this issue, the paper introduces the notion of ranked logics , suitable for use with multiple sources of preferences, and employs them in the definition of weakly and strongly-preferred equilibria in a Multi-Context Systems with Preferences (MCSP) framework. The usefulness of MCSP is demonstrated in two applications: modeling distributed configuration problems and finding explanations for distributed abductive diagnosis problems.