Fuzzy Approach To Reasoning And Decision Making

The papers presented at the Symposium focused mainly on two fields of interest. First, there were papers dealing with the theoretical background of fuzzy logic and with applications of fuzzy reasoning to the problems of artificial intelligence, robotics and expert systems. Second, quite a large number of papers were devoted to fuzzy approaches to modelling of decision-making situations under uncertainty and vagueness and their applications to the evaluation of alternatives, system control and optimization. Apart from that, there were also some interesting contributions from other areas, like fuzzy classifications and the use of fuzzy approaches in quantum physics. This volume contains the most valuable and interesting papers presented at the Symposium and will be of use to all those researchers interested in fuzzy set theory and its applications.

Many decision-making tasks are too complex to be understood quantitatively, however, humans succeed by using knowledge that is imprecise rather than precise. Fuzzy logic resembles human reasoning in its use of imprecise informa tion to generate decisions. Unlike classical logic which requires a deep under standing of a system, exact equations, and precise numeric values, fuzzy logic incorporates an alternative way of thinking, which allows modeling complex systems using a higher level of abstraction originating from our knowledge and experience. Fuzzy logic allows expressing this knowledge with subjective concepts such as very big and a long time which are mapped into exact numeric ranges. Since knowledge can be expressed in a more natural by using fuzzy sets, many decision (and engineering) problems can be greatly simplified. Fuzzy logic provides an inference morphology that enables approximate human reasoning capabilities to be applied to knowledge-based systems. The theory of fuzzy logic provides a mathematical strength to capture the un certainties associated with human cognitive processes, such as thinking and reasoning. The conventional approaches to knowledge representation lack the means for representating the meaning of fuzzy concepts. As a consequence, the approaches based on first order logic do not provide an appropriate con ceptual framework for dealing with the representation of commonsense knowl edge, since such knowledge is by its nature both lexically imprecise and non categorical.

This book mainly introduces some techniques of decision-making, uncertain reasoning and regression analysis under the hesitant fuzzy environment and expands the applications of hesitant fuzzy sets in solving practical problems. The book pursues three major objectives: (1) to introduce some techniques about decision-making, uncertain reasoning and regression analysis under the hesitant fuzzy environment, (2) to prove these techniques theoretically and (3) to apply the involved techniques to practical problems. The book is especially valuable for readers to understand how hesitant fuzzy set could be employed in decision-making, uncertain reasoning and regression analysis and motivates researchers to expand more application fields of hesitant fuzzy set.

The aim of the Special Issue "Applications of Fuzzy Optimization and Fuzzy Decision Making" is to expand the applicability of fuzzy optimization and decision making for solving various types of problems in the areas of economics, business, engineering, management, operations research, etc. Any experimental research or empirical study of theoretical developments in fuzzy optimization and decision making is highly welcome. Additionally, research papers presenting solution methods and/or studying their computational complexity, and proposing new algorithms to solve fuzzy optimization and decision making problems, in an effective and efficient manner, are also welcome. We are looking forward to receive innovative approaches that apply, in practical settings, state-of-the art mathematical/algorithmic techniques from fuzzy technology, computational intelligence and soft-computing methodologies, with the aim to offer robust solutions for complex optimization and decision making problems characterized by non-probabilistic uncertainty, vagueness, ambiguity, and hesitation. Such type of papers will address the suitability, validity, and advantages of using fuzzy technologies and the enhancement of them using intelligent methods to treat real-life problems from various disciplines.

Computation Over Fuzzy Quantities focuses on mathematical models of real phenomena contaminated by vagueness or uncertainty. This is the first book to provide various facts about fuzzy quantities in a brief and elementary format. The book discusses topics including the survey of the backgrounds of the fuzzy quantities theory, the basic orientation in its methods, and the main difficulties connected with its development. A representative list of references is also included.

Decision making arises when we wish to select the best possible course of action from a set of alternatives. With advancements of the digital technologies, it is easy, and almost instantaneous, to gather a large volume of information and/or data pertaining to a problem that we want to solve. For instance, the world-wi- web is perhaps the primary source of information and/or data that we often turn to when we face a decision making problem. However, the information and/or data that we obtain from the real world often are complex, and comprise various kinds of noise. Besides, real-world information and/or data often are incomplete and ambiguous, owing to uncertainties of the environments. All these make decision making a challenging task. To cope with the challenges of decision making, - searchers have designed and developed a variety of decision support systems to provide assistance in human decision making processes. The main aim of this book is to provide a small collection of techniques stemmed from artificial intelligence, as well as other complementary methodo- gies, that are useful for the design and development of intelligent decision support systems. Application examples of how these intelligent decision support systems can be utilized to help tackle a variety of real-world problems in different - mains, e. g. business, management, manufacturing, transportation and food ind- tries, and biomedicine, are also presented. A total of twenty chapters, which can be broadly divided into two parts, i. e.