This book explains the most prominent and some promising new, general techniques that combine metaheuristics with other optimization methods. A first introductory chapter reviews the basic principles of local search, prominent metaheuristics, and tree search, dynamic programming, mixed integer linear programming, and constraint programming for combinatorial optimization purposes. The chapters that follow present five generally applicable hybridization strategies, with exemplary case studies on selected problems: incomplete solution representations and decoders; problem instance reduction; large neighborhood search; parallel non-independent construction of solutions within metaheuristics; and hybridization based on complete solution archives. The authors are among the leading researchers in the hybridization of metaheuristics with other techniques for optimization, and their work reflects the broad shift to problem-oriented rather than algorithm-oriented approaches, enabling faster and more effective implementation in real-life applications. This hybridization is not restricted to different variants of metaheuristics but includes, for example, the combination of mathematical programming, dynamic programming, or constraint programming with metaheuristics, reflecting cross-fertilization in fields such as optimization, algorithmics, mathematical modeling, operations research, statistics, and simulation. The book is a valuable introduction and reference for researchers and graduate students in these domains.

This book presents current innovative, alternative and creative approaches that challenge traditional mechanisms in and across disciplines and industries targeting societal impact. A common thread throughout the book is human-centered, uni and multi-modal strategies across the range of human technologies, including sensing and stimuli; virtual and augmented worlds; games for serious applications; accessibility; digital-ethics and more. Focusing on engaging, meaningful, and motivating activities that at the same time offer systemic information on human condition, performance and progress, the book is of interest to anyone seeking to gain insights into the field, be they students, teachers, practicing professionals, consultants, or family representatives. By offering a wider perspective, it addresses the need for a core text that evokes and provokes, engages and demands and stimulates and satisfies.

Decision has inspired reflection of many thinkers since the ancient times. With the rapid development of science and society, appropriate dynamic decision making has been playing an increasingly important role in many areas of human activity including engineering, management, economy and others. In most real-world problems, decision makers usually have to make decisions sequentially at different points in time and space, at different levels for a component or a system, while facing multiple and conflicting objectives and a hybrid uncertain environment where fuzziness and randomness co-exist in a decision making process. This leads to the development of fuzzy-like multiple objective multistage decision making. This book provides a thorough understanding of the concepts of dynamic optimization from a modern perspective and presents the state-of-the-art methodology for modeling, analyzing and solving the most typical multiple objective multistage decision making practical application problems under fuzzy-like uncertainty, including the dynamic machine allocation, closed multiclass queueing networks optimization, inventory management, facilities planning and transportation assignment. A number of real-world engineering case studies are used to illustrate in detail the methodology. With its emphasis on problem-solving and applications, this book is ideal for researchers, practitioners, engineers, graduate students and upper-level undergraduates in applied mathematics, management science, operations research, information system, civil engineering, building construction and transportation optimization

This book presents an exhaustive and timely review of key research work on fuzzy XML data management, and provides readers with a comprehensive resource on the state-of-the art tools and theories in this fast growing area. Topics covered in the book include: representation of fuzzy XML, query of fuzzy XML, fuzzy database models, extraction of fuzzy XML from fuzzy database models, reengineering of fuzzy XML into fuzzy database models, and reasoning of fuzzy XML. The book is intended as a reference guide for researchers, practitioners and graduate students working and/or studying in the field of Web Intelligence, as well as for data and knowledge engineering professionals seeking new approaches to replace traditional methods, which may be unnecessarily complex or even unproductive.

This book demonstrates the success of Ambient Intelligence in providing possible solutions for the daily needs of humans. The book addresses implications of ambient intelligence in areas of domestic living, elderly care, robotics, communication, philosophy and others. The objective of this edited volume is to show that Ambient Intelligence is a boon to humanity with conceptual, philosophical, methodical and applicative understanding. The book also aims to schematically demonstrate developments in the direction of augmented sensors, embedded systems and behavioral intelligence towards Ambient Intelligent Networks or Smart Living Technology. It contains chapters in the field of Ambient Intelligent Networks, which received highly positive feedback during the review process. The book contains research work, with in-depth state of the art from augmented sensors, embedded technology and artificial intelligence along with cutting-edge research and development of technologies and applications of Ambient Intelligent Networks. This book is intended to introduce ideas, methods, technologies of the future development of humanity, Science and Technology.

This is the proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Design Computing and Cognition (DCC'18) held at the Polytecnico di Milano in Italy. This volume presents both advances in theory and applications and demonstrates the depth and breadth of design computing and design cognition. Design thinking, the label given to the acts of designing, has become a paradigmatic view that has transcended the discipline of design and is now widely used in business and elsewhere. As a consequence there is an increasing interest in design research. This volume contains papers that represent the state-of-the-art research and developments in design computing and design cognition. This book is of particular interest to researchers, developers and users of advanced computation in design and those who need to gain a better understanding of designing that can be obtained through empirical studies.

This book introduces a new paradigm called 'Optimization in Changeable Spaces' (OCS) as a useful tool for decision making and problem solving. It illustrates how OCS incorporates, searches, and constructively restructures the parameters, tangible and intangible, involved in the process of decision making. The book elaborates on OCS problems that can be modeled and solved effectively by using the concepts of competence set analysis, Habitual Domain (HD) and the mental operators called the 7-8-9 principles of deep knowledge of HD. In addition, new concepts of covering and discovering processes are proposed and formulated as mathematical tools to solve OCS problems. The book also includes reformulations of a number of illustrative real-life challenging problems that cannot be solved by traditional optimization techniques into OCS problems, and details how they can be addressed. Beyond that, it also includes perspectives related to innovation dynamics, management, artificial intelligence, artificial and e-economics, scientific discovery and knowledge extraction. This book will be of interest to managers of businesses and institutions, policy makers, and educators and students of decision making and behavior in DBA and/or MBA.

This book presents a unique approach to stream data mining. Unlike the vast majority of previous approaches, which are largely based on heuristics, it highlights methods and algorithms that are mathematically justified. First, it describes how to adapt static decision trees to accommodate data streams; in this regard, new splitting criteria are developed to guarantee that they are asymptotically equivalent to the classical batch tree. Moreover, new decision trees are designed, leading to the original concept of hybrid trees. In turn, nonparametric techniques based on Parzen kernels and orthogonal series are employed to address concept drift in the problem of non-stationary regressions and classification in a time-varying environment. Lastly, an extremely challenging problem that involves designing ensembles and automatically choosing their sizes is described and solved. Given its scope, the book is intended for a professional audience of researchers and practitioners who deal with stream data, e.g. in telecommunication, banking, and sensor networks.

This book is a collection of representative and novel works done in Data Mining, Knowledge Discovery, Clustering and Classification that were originally presented in French at the EGC'2012 Conference held in Bordeaux, France, on January 2012. This conference was the 12th edition of this event, which takes place each year and which is now successful and well-known in the French-speaking community. This community was structured in 2003 by the foundation of the French-speaking EGC society (EGC in French stands for Extraction et Gestion des Connaissances'' and means Knowledge Discovery and Management'', or KDM).

This book is intended to be read by all researchers interested in these fields, including PhD or MSc students, and researchers from public or private laboratories. It concerns both theoretical and practical aspects of KDM. The book is structured in two parts called Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining'' and Classification and Feature Extraction or Selection''. The first part (6 chapters) deals with data clustering and data mining. The three remaining chapters of the second part are related to classification and feature extraction or feature selection.

There is widespread interest in the way that smart energy control systems, such as assessment and monitoring techniques for low carbon, nearly-zero energy and net positive buildings can contribute to a Sustainable future, for current and future generations. There is a turning point on the horizon for the supply of energy from finite resources such as natural gas and oil become less reliable in economic terms and extraction become more challenging, and more unacceptable socially, such as adverse public reaction to 'fracking'. Thus, in 2016 these challenges are having a major influence on the design, optimisation, performance measurements, operation and preservation of: buildings, neighbourhoods, cities, regions, countries and continents. The source and nature of energy, the security of supply and the equity of distribution, the environmental impact of its supply and utilization, are all crucial matters to be addressed by suppliers, consumers, governments, industry, academia, and financial institutions. This book entitled 'Smart Energy Control Systems for Sustainable Buildings' contains eleven chapters written by international experts based on enhanced conference papers presented at the Sustainability and Energy in Buildings International conference series. This book will be of interest to University staff and students; and also industry practioners.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of computational intelligence methods for semantic knowledge management. Contrary to popular belief, the methods for semantic management of information were created several decades ago, long before the birth of the Internet. In fact, it was back in 1945 when Vannevar Bush introduced the idea for the first protohypertext: the MEMEX (MEMory + indEX) machine. In the years that followed, Bush's idea influenced the development of early hypertext systems until, in the 1980s, Tim Berners Lee developed the idea of the World Wide Web (WWW) as it is known today. From then on, there was an exponential growth in research and industrial activities related to the semantic management of the information and its exploitation in different application domains, such as healthcare, e-learning and energy management. However, semantics methods are not yet able to address some of the problems that naturally characterize knowledge management, such as the vagueness and uncertainty of information. This book reveals how computational intelligence methodologies, due to their natural inclination to deal with imprecision and partial truth, are opening new positive scenarios for designing innovative semantic knowledge management architectures.

This book provides readers with a timely and comprehensive yet concise view on the field of fuzzy logic and its real-world applications. The chapters, written by authoritative scholars in the field, report on promising new models for data analysis, decision making, and systems modeling, with a special emphasis on their applications in management science. The book is a token of appreciation from the fuzzy research community to Professor Christer Carlsson for his long time research and organizational commitment, which have among other things resulted in the foundation and success of the Institute for Advanced Management Systems Research (IAMSR) at Abo Akademi University, in Abo (Turku), Finland. The book serves as timely guide for the fuzzy logic and operations research communities alike.

This book highlights the state of the art and recent advances in Big Data clustering methods and their innovative applications in contemporary AI-driven systems. The book chapters discuss Deep Learning for Clustering, Blockchain data clustering, Cybersecurity applications such as insider threat detection, scalable distributed clustering methods for massive volumes of data; clustering Big Data Streams such as streams generated by the confluence of Internet of Things, digital and mobile health, human-robot interaction, and social networks; Spark-based Big Data clustering using Particle Swarm Optimization; and Tensor-based clustering for Web graphs, sensor streams, and social networks. The chapters in the book include a balanced coverage of big data clustering theory, methods, tools, frameworks, applications, representation, visualization, and clustering validation.

This book presents selected research papers from the 2015 Chinese Intelligent Systems Conference (CISC'15), held in Yangzhou, China. The topics covered include multi-agent systems, evolutionary computation, artificial intelligence, complex systems, computation intelligence and soft computing, intelligent control, advanced control technology, robotics and applications, intelligent information processing, iterative learning control, and machine learning. Engineers and researchers from academia, industry and the government can gain valuable insights into solutions combining ideas from multiple disciplines in the field of intelligent systems.

This book focuses on the characteristics of cooperative control problems for general linear multi-agent systems, including formation control, air traffic control, rendezvous, foraging, role assignment, and cooperative search. On this basis and combined with linear system theory, it introduces readers to the cooperative tracking problem for identical continuous-time multi-agent systems under state-coupled dynamics; the cooperative output regulation for heterogeneous multi-agent systems; and the optimal output regulation for model-free multi-agent systems. In closing, the results are extended to multiple leaders, and cooperative containment control for uncertain multi-agent systems is addressed. Given its scope, the book offers an essential reference guide for researchers and designers of multi-agent systems, as well as a valuable resource for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students.

This book introduces a new set of orthogonal hybrid functions (HF) which approximates time functions in a piecewise linear manner which is very suitable for practical applications. The book presents an analysis of different systems namely, time-invariant system, time-varying system, multi-delay systems---both homogeneous and non-homogeneous type- and the solutions are obtained in the form of discrete samples. The book also investigates system identification problems for many of the above systems. The book is spread over 15 chapters and contains 180 black and white figures, 18 colour figures, 85 tables and 56 illustrative examples. MATLAB codes for many such examples are included at the end of the book.

This book provides an overview of intelligent decision-making techniques and discusses their application in production and retail operations. Manufacturing and retail enterprises have stringent standards for using advanced and reliable techniques to improve decision-making processes, since these processes have significant effects on the performance of relevant operations and the entire supply chain. In recent years, researchers have been increasingly focusing attention on using intelligent techniques to solve various decision-making problems. The opening chapters provide an introduction to several commonly used intelligent techniques, such as genetic algorithm, harmony search, neural network and extreme learning machine. The book then explores the use of these techniques for handling various production and retail decision-making problems, such as production planning and scheduling, assembly line balancing, and sales forecasting.

The present book includes a set of selected papers from the tenth "International Conference on Informatics in Control Automation and Robotics" (ICINCO 2013), held in Reykjavik, Iceland, from 29 to 31 July 2013. The conference was organized in four simultaneous tracks: "Intelligent Control Systems and Optimization", "Robotics and Automation", "Signal Processing, Sensors, Systems Modeling and Control" and "Industrial Engineering, Production and Management". The book is based on the same structure. ICINCO 2013 received 255 paper submissions from 50 countries, in all continents. After a double blind paper review performed by the Program Committee only 30% were published and presented orally. A further refinement was made after the conference, based also on the assessment of presentation quality, so that this book includes the extended and revised versions of the very best papers of ICINCO 2013.

This research monograph focuses on the design of arithmetic circuits in Quantum Dot Cellular Automata (QCA). Using the fact that the 3-input majority gate is a primitive in QCA, the book sets out to discover hitherto unknown properties of majority logic in the context of arithmetic circuit designs. The pursuit for efficient adders in QCA takes two forms. One involves application of the new results in majority logic to existing adders. The second involves development of a custom adder for QCA technology. A QCA adder named as hybrid adder is proposed and it is shown that it outperforms existing multi-bit adders with respect to area and delay. The work is extended to the design of a low-complexity multiplier for signed numbers in QCA. Furthermore the book explores two aspects unique to QCA technology, namely thermal robustness and the role of interconnects. In addition, the book introduces the reader to QCA layout design and simulation using QCADesigner. Features & Benefits: This research-based book: *Introduces the reader to Quantum Dot Cellular Automata, an emerging nanotechnology. *Explores properties of majority logic. *Demonstrates application of the properties to design efficient arithmetic circuits. *Guides the reader towards layout design and simulation in QCADesigner.

This book covers the most recent advances in the field of evolutionary multiobjective optimization. With the aim of drawing the attention of up-and coming scientists towards exciting prospects at the forefront of computational intelligence, the authors have made an effort to ensure that the ideas conveyed herein are accessible to the widest audience. The book begins with a summary of the basic concepts in multi-objective optimization. This is followed by brief discussions on various algorithms that have been proposed over the years for solving such problems, ranging from classical (mathematical) approaches to sophisticated evolutionary ones that are capable of seamlessly tackling practical challenges such as non-convexity, multi-modality, the presence of multiple constraints, etc. Thereafter, some of the key emerging aspects that are likely to shape future research directions in the field are presented. These include: optimization in dynamic environments, multi-objective bilevel programming, handling high dimensionality under many objectives, and evolutionary multitasking. In addition to theory and methodology, this book describes several real-world applications from various domains, which will expose the readers to the versatility of evolutionary multi-objective optimization.

Information is becoming the raw material of modern society; it is the driving force of modern service industries. Our information spaces have been pervaded by technology and are characterized by their increasing size and complexity. Furthermore, access to information spaces and the ability to use them effectively and efficiently have become key economic success factors. Interdisciplinary Advances in Adaptive and Intelligent Assistant Systems: Concepts, Techniques, Applications, and Use encourages knowledge on effective and efficient approaches to accessing information spaces. It fosters an emerging key competence: accessing and processing large, highly complex corpora of information by applying collaborative, intelligent technical systems. It is the mission of this book to trigger interdisciplinary research and cooperation at the intersection between information sciences, information technologies and communication sciences. This publication also raises awareness of the field s importance in business and management communities, thus contributing to the dissemination of scientific ideas and insights.

This book is devoted to embedded systems (ESs), which can now be found in practically all fields of human activity. Embedded systems are essentially a special class of computing systems designed for monitoring and controlling objects of the physical world. The book begins by discussing the distinctive features of ESs, above all their cybernetic-physical character, and how they can be designed to deliver the required performance with a minimum amount of hardware. In turn, it presents a range of design methodologies. Considerable attention is paid to the hardware implementation of computational algorithms. It is shown that different parts of complex ESs could be implemented using models of finite state machines (FSMs). Also, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are very often used to implement different hardware accelerators in ESs. The book pays considerable attention to design methods for FPGA-based FSMs, before the closing section turns to programmable logic controllers widely used in industry. This book will be interesting and useful for students and postgraduates in the area of Computer Science, as well as for designers of embedded systems. In addition, it offers a good point of departure for creating embedded systems for various spheres of human activity.

This contributed volume, written by leading international researchers, reviews the latest developments of genetic programming (GP) and its key applications in solving current real world problems, such as energy conversion and management, financial analysis, engineering modeling and design, and software engineering, to name a few. Inspired by natural evolution, the use of GP has expanded significantly in the last decade in almost every area of science and engineering. Exploring applications in a variety of fields, the information in this volume can help optimize computer programs throughout the sciences. Taking a hands-on approach, this book provides an invaluable reference to practitioners, providing the necessary details required for a successful application of GP and its branches to challenging problems ranging from drought prediction to trading volatility. It also demonstrates the evolution of GP through major developments in GP studies and applications. It is suitable for advanced students who wish to use relevant book chapters as a basis to pursue further research in these areas, as well as experienced practitioners looking to apply GP to new areas. The book also offers valuable supplementary material for design courses and computation in engineering.

This book introduces the latest visual effects (VFX) techniques that can be applied to game programming. The usefulness of the physicality-based VFX techniques, such as water, fire, smoke, and wind, has been proven through active involvement and utilization in movies and images. However, they have yet to be extensively applied in the game industry, due to the high technical barriers. Readers of this book can learn not only the theories about the latest VFX techniques, but also the methodology of game programming, step by step. The practical VFX processing techniques introduced in this book will provide very helpful information to game programmers. Due to the lack of instructional books about VFX-related game programming, the demand for knowledge regarding these high-tech VFXs might be very high.