Unifying credal partitions and fuzzy orthopartitions

This work focuses on fuzzy orthopartitions and credal partitions, which are distinct mathematical models representing partitions where the membership of elements to classes is only partially known. Firstly, we show that fuzzy orthopartitions and credal partitions are special cases of generalized fuzzy orthopartitions, which we introduce in this article as a new structure for modelling partitions with uncertainty. Next, we examine the connections between credal partitions and fuzzy orthopartitions, considering that both can be seen as types of fuzzy partitions (in particular, we deal with fuzzy probabilistic and Ruspini partitions). Moreover, we find that each generalized fuzzy orthopartition corresponds to a collection of zero, one, or infinitely many credal partitions; conversely, a credal partition maps to at most one generalized fuzzy orthopartition. Finally, we identify the class of all credal partitions that coincide with fuzzy orthopartitions.