Optimization is of central concern to a number of discip­ lines. Operations Research and Decision Theory are often consi­ dered to be identical with optimizationo But also in other areas such as engineering design, regional policy, logistics and many others, the search for optimal solutions is one of the prime goals. The methods and models which have been used over the last decades in these areas have primarily been "hard" or "crisp", i. e. the solutions were considered to be either fea­ sible or unfeasible, either above a certain aspiration level or below. This dichotomous structure of methods very often forced the modeller to approximate real problem situations of the more-or-less type by yes-or-no-type models, the solutions of which might turn out not to be the solutions to the real prob­ lems. This is particularly true if the problem under considera­ tion includes vaguely defined relationships, human evaluations, uncertainty due to inconsistent or incomplete evidence, if na­ tural language has to be modelled or if state variables can only be described approximately. Until recently, everything which was not known with cer­ tainty, i. e. which was not known to be either true or false or which was not known to either happen with certainty or to be impossible to occur, was modelled by means of probabilitieso This holds in particular for uncertainties concerning the oc­ currence of events.

Product Description: Aggregation plays a central role in many of the technological tasks we are faced with. The importance of this process will become even greater as we move more and more toward becoming an information-cent.ered society, us is happening with the rapid growth of the Internet and the World Wirle Weh...read more

Product Description: Soft computing has provided sophisticated methodologies for the development of intelligent decision support systems. Fast advances in soft computing technologies, such as fuzzy logic and systems, artificial neural networks and evolutionary computation, have made available powerful problem representation and modelling paradigms, and learning and optimisation mechanisms for addressing modern decision making issues...read more

Product Description: Soft Computing has come of age. In particular, Artificial Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic and Evolutionary Computing now play an important role in many domains where traditional techniques have been found wanting. As this volume confirms, hybrid solutions that combine more than one of the Soft Computing approaches are particularly successful in many problem areas...read more

Product Description: Modern medicine generates, almost daily, huge amounts of heterogeneous data. For example, medical data may contain SPECT images, signals like ECG, clinical information like temperature, cholesterol levels, etc., as well as the physician's interpretation...read more

Product Description: Fuzzy sets were first proposed by Lotfi Zadeh in his seminal paper [366] in 1965, and ever since have been a center of many discussions, fervently admired and condemned. Both proponents and opponents consider the argu­ ments pointless because none of them would step back from their territory...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Concepts similar to fuzzy measure have been introduced independently in many domains: in non-expected utility theory, cooperative game theory, complexity analysis, measure theory, etc. This book reflects all these facets. It gathers survey papers written by leading researchers in the field, covering a selection of most significant topics...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: The focus is on the application of soft computing to a new emerging discipline called financial engineering. Financial engineering can be seen as a field emerging out of an attempt to address the issues of concern in finance with the tools and perspectives of engineering, especially electrical and systems engineering...read more

Product Description: The title of this book seems to indicate that the volume is dedicated to a very specialized and narrow area, i. e. , to the relationship between a very special type of optimization and mathematical programming. The contrary is however true...read more

Product Description: The important issue of how to overcome rigidness, inadequacy and human inconsistency regarding conventional assumptions on preferences in decision making (for example, regarding yes/no crispness or transitivity) is discussed by well-known experts in this volume...read more