Knowledge Fusion : Applications to photogrammetric surveys of underwater archaeological excavations.
In this work we propose a study of the knowledge fusion and its applications in the survey of underwater archaeological excavations. The framework of this work is the knowledge based measure, which can be represented by a synthesis between theoretical models designed by specific domain experts and set of observations performed on surveyed objects. During the study of an archaeological site, surveys can be made by different operators and at different times. This multiplication of observations can lead to inconsistencies during the aggregation of the partial results (many times surveyed objects, bad identified objects).The building of a final result requires a fusion process piloted by the leader of the study. Such process must be automated while leaving to the operator the choice of the methods used to ensure the final consistency. This work is divided into three parts: a theoretical study of the known methods for knowledge fusion, the implementation of fusion methods as part of the knowledge based measurement and experimentation of proposed solutions during surveys in full‐scale applications. In the first part, we present a theoretical study of known belief fusion methods and we propose a new framework allowing to express these methods at a semantic and syntactic level while adding it a reversibility. This framework is based on polynomials weights that allow to represent priorities between believes but also history of the changes of these priorities. In the second part, we present knowledge based measurement by representing a formalism of representation based on entity notion. We propose then adapted technics of fusion in the new representation. These technics are based on propositional logic and first order logic. Algorithms of fusion are proposed and studied. In the last part, we introduce experimentation of techniques of proposed fusion methods. We offer a description of the developed tools used as part of plan European VENUS (http://www.venus‐project.eu) but also their extensions to building archaeology and in underwater biology.