Letter: The concept of stratification and future applications

The main purpose of this letter is to draw attention to a recent concept, namely Concept of Stratification (CST) developed by Zadeh [1]. CST describes a system that transitions through a number of states in order to arrive at a desired state. CST is a problem-solving approach, which is easy while effective. Therefore, CST seems very likely to emerge in coming years as a major interest area in areas such as soft computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and big data. In this expository letter, the advantages and the main shortcoming of CST are reviewed. The concept is explained and areas that the concept is likely to be applied are discussed. Considering the generality of the original CST proposed by Zadeh, it is possible to consider different versions for CST to be applied in future studies. Hence, versions of CST including fuzzy CST, a 3DCST, and multiple systems and multiple CSTs are presented. This work is a first step in a vast range of applications of CST. Researchers, especially those applying soft computing tools such as fuzzy sets theory and granulation, are encouraged to examine the capability of CST in addressing significant real-world problems.