3. Soft Rough Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets

Theories of fuzzy sets and rough sets are powerful mathematical tools for modelling various types of uncertainty. Molodtsov (Comput Math Appl 37:19–31, 1999 [6]) initiated a novel concept called soft sets, a new mathematical tool for dealing with uncertainties. It has been found that fuzzy sets, rough sets, and soft sets are closely related concepts (Aktas and Cagman in Inf Sci 1(77):2726–2735, 2007 [1]). Research works on soft sets are very active and progressing rapidly in these years. In 2001, Maji et al. (J Fuzzy Math 9(3):589–602, 2001 [5]) proposed the idea of intuitionistic fuzzy soft set theory and established some results on them. Based on an equivalence relation on the universe of discourse, Dubois and Prade (Int J Gen Syst 17:191–209, 1990 [3]) introduced the lower and upper approximation of fuzzy sets in a Pawlak approximation space and obtained a new notion called rough fuzzy sets. Feng et al. (Soft Compt 14:899–911, 2009 [4]) introduced lower and upper soft rough approximation of fuzzy sets in a soft approximation space and obtained a new hybrid model called soft rough fuzzy sets which is the extension of Dubois and Prade’s rough fuzzy sets. The aim of this chapter is to consider lower and upper soft rough intuitionistic fuzzy approximation of intuitionistic fuzzy sets in intuitionistic fuzzy soft approximation space (IF soft approximation space) and obtain a new hybrid model called soft rough intuitionistic fuzzy sets which can be seen as extension of both the previous work by Dubois and Prade and Feng et al.