Building up Shared Knowledge with Logical Information Systems

Logical Information Systems (LIS) are based on Logical Con- cept Analysis, an extension of Formal Concept Analysis. This paper de- scribes an application of LIS to support group decision. A case study gathered a research team. The objective was to decide on a set of po- tential conferences on which to send submissions. People individually used Abilis, a LIS web server, to preselect a set of conferences. Start- ing from 1041 call for papers, the individual participants preselected 63 conferences. They met and collectively used Abilis to select a shared set of 42 target conferences. The team could then sketch a publication planning. The case study provides evidence that LIS cover at least three of the collaboration patterns identified by Kolfschoten, de Vreede and Briggs. Abilis helped the team to build a more complete and relevant set of information (Generate/Gathering pattern); to build a shared un- derstanding of the relevant information (Clarify/Building Shared Un- derstanding); and to quickly reduce the number of target conferences (Reduce/Filtering pattern).