Comparative uncertainty: theory and automation

In the last decades, qualitative approaches to probabilistic uncertainty are receiving wider and wider attention. We propose a characterization of partial preference orders through an uniform axiomatic treatment of a variety of qualitative uncertainty notions. To this aim we prove a representation result that connects qualitative notions of partial uncertainty to their numerical counterparts. We describe an executable specification, in the declarative framework of Answer Set Programming, that constitutes the core engine for qualitative management of uncertainty. Some basic reasoning tasks are also identified.