Data quality assessment through a preference model

Evaluating the quality of data is a problem of a multi-dimensional nature and quite frequently depends on the perspective of an expected use or final purpose of the data. Numerous works have explored the well-known specification of data quality dimensions in various application domains, without addressing the inter-dependencies and aggregation of quality attributes for decision support. In this work we therefore propose a context-dependent formal process to evaluate the quality of data which integrates a preference model from the field of Multi-Criteria Decision Aiding. The parameters of this preference model are determined through interviews with work-domain experts. We show the interest of the proposal on a case study related to the evaluation of the quality of hydrographical survey data.