Knowledge discovery in distributed databases using evidence theory

Distributed databases allow us to integrate data from different sources whi ch have not previously been combined. The Dempster-Shafer theory of evidenc e and evidential reasoning are particularly suited to the integration of di stributed databases. Evidential functions are suited to represent evidence from different sources. Evidential reasoning is carried out by the well-kno wn orthogonal sum. Previous work has defined linguistic summaries to discov er knowledge by using fuzzy set theory and using evidence theory to define summaries. In this paper we study linguistic summaries and their applicatio ns to knowledge discovery in distributed databases. (C) 2000 John Wiley & S ons, Inc.