Sebastian Rudolph

Sébastien Ferré

The discipline of formal concept analysis (FCA) is concerned with the form- ization of concepts and conceptual thinking. Built on the solid foundation of lattice and order theory, FCA is ?rst and foremost a mathematical discipline. However,its motivation andguiding principles arebasedon strongphilosophical underpinnings. In practice, FCA provides a powerful framework for the qua- tative, formal analysis of data, as demonstrated by numerous applications in diverse areas. Likewise, it emphasizes the aspect of human-centered information processing by employing visualization techniques capable of revealing inherent structure in data in an intuitively graspable way. FCA thereby contributes to structuring and navigating the ever-growing amount of information available in our evolving information society and supports the process of turning data into information and ultimately into knowledge. In response to an expanding FCA community, the International Conference on Formal Concept Analysis (ICFCA) was established to provide an annual opportunity for the exchange of ideas. Previous ICFCA conferences were held in Darmstadt (2003), Sydney (2004), Lens (2005), Dresden (2006), Clermont- Ferrand (2007), as well as Montreal (2008) and are evidence of vivid ongoing interest and activities in FCA theory and applications. ICFCA 2009 took place during May 21–24 at the University of Applied S- ences in Darmstadt. Beyond serving as a host of the very ?rst ICFCA in 2003, Darmstadt can be seen as the birthplace of FCA itself, where this discipline was introduced in the early 1980s and elaborated over the subsequent decades.

7th International Conference, ICFCA 2009 Darmstadt, Germany, May 21-24, 2009 Proceedings

Formal Concept Analysis

Madalina Croitoru

Dickson Lukose

th The 18 International Conference on Conceptual Structures (ICCS 2010) was the latest in a series of annual conferences that have been held in Europe, A- tralia, and North America since 1993. The focus of the conference has been the representation and analysis of conceptual knowledge for research and practical application. ICCS brings together researchers and practitioners in information and computer sciences as well as social science to explore novel ways that c- ceptual structures can be deployed. Arising from the research on knowledge representation and reasoning with conceptual graphs, over the years ICCS has broadened its scope to include in- vations from a wider range of theories and related practices, among them other forms of graph-based reasoning systems like RDF or existential graphs, formal concept analysis, Semantic Web technologies, ontologies, concept mapping and more. Accordingly, ICCS represents a family of approaches related to conc- tualstructuresthatbuild onthesuccesseswithtechniquesderivedfromarti?cial intelligence, knowledge representation and reasoning, applied mathematics and lattice theory, computational linguistics, conceptual modeling and design, d- grammatic reasoning and logic, intelligent systems and knowledge management. The ICCS 2010 theme “From Information to Intelligence” hints at unve- ing the reasoning capabilities of conceptual structures. Indeed, improvements in storage capacity and performance of computing infrastructure have also - fected the nature of knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR) systems, shifting their focus toward representational power and execution performance. Therefore, KRR research is now faced with a challenge of developing knowledge representation and reasoning structures optimized for such reasonings.

Sébastien Ferré

Books

Your next favorite book is out there