Flexible Query Answering Systems

ThisvolumeconstitutestheproceedingsoftheFifthInternationalConferenceon Flexible Query Answering Systems, FQAS 2002, held in Copenhagen, Denmark on October 27–29, 2002. FQAS is the premier conference for researchers and practitioners concerned with the vital task of providing easy, ?exible, and intuitive access to information for every type of need. This multidisciplinary conference draws on several re- arch areas, including databases, information retrieval, knowledge representation, soft computing, multimedia, and human–computer interaction. Previous FQAS events were held in 1994, 1996, 1998, and 2000. The overall theme of the FQAS conferences is innovative query systems - medatprovidingeasy,?exible,andintuitiveaccesstoinformation.Suchsystems are intended to facilitate retrieval from information repositories such as data- ses,libraries,andtheWorld-WideWeb.Theserepositoriesaretypicallyequipped with standard query systems which are often inadequate, and the focus of FQAS is the development of query systems that are more expressive, informative, c- perative, and productive. These proceedings contain 29 original papers that relate to the topic of users posing queries and systems producing answers. The papers cover the ?elds: - tabase Management, Information Retrieval, Domain Modeling, Knowledge - presentation and Ontologies, Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Arti?cial Intelligence, Classical and Non-classical Logics, Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing, Multimedia Information Systems, and Human– Computer Interaction. We wish to thank the contributors for their excellent papers and the referees, publisher, and sponsors for their e?ort. Special thanks also to the invited sp- kers, members of the Advisory Board, and members of theProgram Committee. They made the success of FQAS 2002 possible.