This volume contains the papers presented at the Eleventh Flexible Query Answering Systems 2015 (FQAS-2015) held on October 26-28, 2015 in Cracow, Poland. The international conferences on Flexible Query Answering Systems (FQAS) are a series of premier conferences focusing on the key issue in the information society of providing easy, flexible, and intuitive access to information and knowledge to everybody, even people with a very limited computer literacy. In targeting this issue, the Conference draws on several research areas, such as information retrieval, database management, information filtering, knowledge representation, soft computing, management of multimedia information, and human-computer interaction. The Conference provides a unique opportunity for researchers, developers and practitioners to explore new ideas and approaches in a multidisciplinary forum.

Flexible Query Answering Systems is an edited collection of contributed chapters. It focuses on developing computer systems capable of transforming a query into an answer with useful information. The emphasis is on problems associated with high-level intelligent answering systems. The coverage is multidisciplinary with chapters by authors from information science, logic, fuzzy systems, databases, artificial intelligence and knowledge representation. Each contribution represents a theory involving flexibility in query-answering, and each addresses specific answering problems. Coverage includes topics such as fuzzy sets in flexible querying, non-standard database interactions, metareasoning and agents, and many others. Contributions for this volume were written by leading researchers from their respective subject areas, including Patrick Bosc, Bernadette Bouchon-Meunier, Amihai Motro, Henri Prade and Ron Yager, among others. Flexible Query Answering Systems is a timely contribution for researchers working on high-level query mechanism 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 the Program Committee. They made the success of FQAS 2002 possible.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Flexible Query Answering Systems, FQAS 2021, held virtually and in Bratislava, Slovakia, in September 2021. The 16 full papers and 1 perspective papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 17 submissions. They are organized in the following topical sections: model-based flexible query answering approaches and data-driven approaches.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Flexible Query Answering Systems, FQAS 2013, held in Granada, Spain, in September 2013. The 59 full papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in a general session train and a parallel special session track. The general session train covers the following topics: querying-answering systems; semantic technology; patterns and classification; personalization and recommender systems; searching and ranking; and Web and human-computer interaction. The special track covers some specific and, typically, newer fields, namely: environmental scanning for strategic early warning; generating linguistic descriptions of data; advances in fuzzy querying and fuzzy databases: theory and applications; fusion and ensemble techniques for online learning on data streams; and intelligent information extraction from texts.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Flexible Query Answering Systems, FQAS 2019, held in Amantea, Italy, in July 2019. The 27 full papers and 10 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 43 submissions. The papers present emerging research trends with a special focus on flexible querying and analytics for smart cities and smart societies in the age of big data. They are organized in the following topical sections: flexible database management and querying; ontologies and knowledge bases; social networks and social media; argumentation-based query answering; data mining and knowledge discovery; advanced flexible query answering methodologies and techniques; flexible query answering methods and techniques; flexible intelligent information-oriented and network-oriented approaches; big data veracity and soft computing; flexibility in tools; and systems and miscellanea.