On the use of information fusion techniques to improve information quality: Taxonomy, opportunities and challenges

Abstract The information fusion field has recently been attracting a lot of interest within the scientific community, as it provides, through the combination of different sources of heterogeneous information, a fuller and/or more precise understanding of the real world than can be gained considering the above sources separately. One of the fundamental aims of computer systems, and especially decision support systems, is to assure that the quality of the information they process is high. There are many different approaches for this purpose, including information fusion. Information fusion is currently one of the most promising methods. It is particularly useful under circumstances where quality might be compromised, for example, either intrinsically due to imperfect information (vagueness, uncertainty, …) or because of limited resources (energy, time, …). In response to this goal, a wide range of research has been undertaken over recent years. To date, the literature reviews in this field have focused on problem-specific issues and have been circumscribed to certain system types. Therefore, there is no holistic and systematic knowledge of the state of the art to help establish the steps to be taken in the future. In particular, aspects like what impact different information fusion methods have on information quality, how information quality is characterised, measured and evaluated in different application domains depending on the problem data type or whether fusion is designed as a flexible process capable of adapting to changing system circumstances and their intrinsically limited resources have not been addressed. This paper aims precisely to review the literature on research into the use of information fusion techniques specifically to improve information quality, analysing the above issues in order to identify a series of challenges and research directions, which are presented in this paper.