This work provides an innovative look at the use of open data for extracting information to detect and prevent crime, and also explores the link between terrorism and organized crime. In counter-terrorism and other forms of crime prevention, foresight about potential threats is vitally important and this information is increasingly available via electronic data sources such as social media communications. However, the amount and quality of these sources is varied, and researchers and law enforcement need guidance about when and how to extract useful information from them. The emergence of these crime threats, such as communication between organized crime networks and radicalization towards terrorism, is driven by a combination of political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors. The contributions to this volume represent a major step by researchers to systematically collect, filter, interpret, and use the information available. For the purposes of this book, the only data sources used are publicly available sources which can be accessed legally and ethically. This work will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, particularly in police science, organized crime, counter-terrorism and crime science. It will also be of interest to those in related fields such as applications of computer science and data mining, public policy, and business intelligence.

Flexible Query Answering Systems is an edited collection of contributed chapters. It focuses on developing computer systems capable of transforming a query into an answer with useful information. The emphasis is on problems associated with high-level intelligent answering systems. The coverage is multidisciplinary with chapters by authors from information science, logic, fuzzy systems, databases, artificial intelligence and knowledge representation. Each contribution represents a theory involving flexibility in query-answering, and each addresses specific answering problems. Coverage includes topics such as fuzzy sets in flexible querying, non-standard database interactions, metareasoning and agents, and many others. Contributions for this volume were written by leading researchers from their respective subject areas, including Patrick Bosc, Bernadette Bouchon-Meunier, Amihai Motro, Henri Prade and Ron Yager, among others. Flexible Query Answering Systems is a timely contribution for researchers working on high-level query mechanism systems.

This work provides an innovative look at the use of open data for extracting information to detect and prevent crime, and also explores the link between terrorism and organized crime. In counter-terrorism and other forms of crime prevention, foresight about potential threats is vitally important and this information is increasingly available via electronic data sources such as social media communications. However, the amount and quality of these sources is varied, and researchers and law enforcement need guidance about when and how to extract useful information from them. The emergence of these crime threats, such as communication between organized crime networks and radicalization towards terrorism, is driven by a combination of political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors. The contributions to this volume represent a major step by researchers to systematically collect, filter, interpret, and use the information available. For the purposes of this book, the only data sources used are publicly available sources which can be accessed legally and ethically. This work will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, particularly in police science, organized crime, counter-terrorism and crime science. It will also be of interest to those in related fields such as applications of computer science and data mining, public policy, and business intelligence.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Flexible Query Answering Systems, FQAS 2013, held in Granada, Spain, in September 2013. The 59 full papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in a general session train and a parallel special session track. The general session train covers the following topics: querying-answering systems; semantic technology; patterns and classification; personalization and recommender systems; searching and ranking; and Web and human-computer interaction. The special track covers some specific and, typically, newer fields, namely: environmental scanning for strategic early warning; generating linguistic descriptions of data; advances in fuzzy querying and fuzzy databases: theory and applications; fusion and ensemble techniques for online learning on data streams; and intelligent information extraction from texts.

Flexible Query Answering Systems is an edited collection of contributed chapters. It focuses on developing computer systems capable of transforming a query into an answer with useful information. The emphasis is on problems associated with high-level intelligent answering systems. The coverage is multidisciplinary with chapters by authors from information science, logic, fuzzy systems, databases, artificial intelligence and knowledge representation. Each contribution represents a theory involving flexibility in query-answering, and each addresses specific answering problems. Coverage includes topics such as fuzzy sets in flexible querying, non-standard database interactions, metareasoning and agents, and many others. Contributions for this volume were written by leading researchers from their respective subject areas, including Patrick Bosc, Bernadette Bouchon-Meunier, Amihai Motro, Henri Prade and Ron Yager, among others. Flexible Query Answering Systems is a timely contribution for researchers working on high-level query mechanism systems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Flexible Query Answering Systems, FQAS 2009, held in Roskilde, Denmark, in October 2009.

The 57 papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 90 submissions. They are structured in topical sections on database management, information retrieval, extraction and mining, ontologies and semantic web, intelligent information extraction from texts, advances in fuzzy querying, personalization, preferences, context and recommendation, and Web as a stream.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the First European Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics, EuroISI 2008, held in Esbjerg Denmark, December 3-5, 2008. Intelligence and security informatics (ISI) is a multidisciplinary ?eld enc- passing methodologies, models, algorithms, and advanced tools for intelligence analysis, homeland security, terrorism research as well as security-related public policies. EuroISI 2008 was the ?rst European edition of the series of ISI sym- siums that have been held annually in the USA since 2003, and more recently in Asia. These meetings gather together people from previously disparate c- munities to provide a stimulating forum for the exchange of ideas and results. Participantshave included academic researchers(especially in the ?elds of inf- mation technologies, computer science, public policy, and social and behavioral studies), law enforcement and intelligence experts, as well as information te- nology companies, industry consultants and practitioners in the relevant ?elds. These proceedings contain 25 originalpapers, out of 48 submissions received, related to the topics of intelligence and security informatics. The papers cover a broad range of ?elds such as: social network analysis, knowledge discovery, web-based intelligence and analysis, privacy protection, access control, digital rights management, malware and intrusion detection, surveillance, crisis m- agement, andcomputationalintelligence, amongothers.Additionallytothemain conference, a poster section was organize

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Flexible Query Answering Systems, FQAS 2006, held in Milan, Italy in June 2006. The book presents 60 revised full papers, organized in topical sections on flexibility in database management and querying, vagueness and uncertainty in XML querying and retrieval, information retrieval and filtering, multimedia information access, user modeling and personalization, knowledge and data extraction, and more.

ThisvolumeconstitutestheproceedingsoftheSixthInternationalConferenceon Flexible Query Answering Systems, FQAS 2004, held in Lyon, France, on June 24-26, 2004. FQAS is the premier conference for researchers and practitioners concerned with the vital task of providing easy, ?exible, and intuitive access to information for every type of need. This multidisciplinary conference draws on several research areas, including databases, information retrieval, knowledge representation, soft computing, multimedia, and human-computer interaction. With FQAS 2004, the FQAS conference series celebrated its tenth anniversary as it has been held every two years since 1994. The overall theme of the FQAS conferences is innovative query systems aimed at providing easy, ?exible, and intuitive access to information. Such systems are intended to facilitate retrieval from information repositories such as databases, libraries, and the Web. These repositories are typically equipped with standard query systems that are often inadequate for users. The focus of FQAS is the development of query systems that are more expressive, informative, cooperative, productive, and intuitive to use.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Flexible Query Answering Systems, FQAS 2002, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in October 2002. The 29 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the proceedings. Among the fields covered are database management, information retrieval, domain modeling, knowledge representation and ontologies, knowledge discovery and data mining, artificial intelligence, classical and nonclassical logics, computational linguistics, natural language processing, multimedia information systems, and human-computer interaction.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Flexible Query Answering Systems, FQAS 2021, held virtually and in Bratislava, Slovakia, in September 2021.The 16 full papers and 1 perspective papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 17 submissions. They are organized in the following topical sections: model-based flexible query answering approaches and data-driven approaches.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Flexible Query Answering Systems, FQAS 2019, held in Amantea, Italy, in July 2019. The 27 full papers and 10 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 43 submissions. The papers present emerging research trends with a special focus on flexible querying and analytics for smart cities and smart societies in the age of big data. They are organized in the following topical sections: flexible database management and querying; ontologies and knowledge bases; social networks and social media; argumentation-based query answering; data mining and knowledge discovery; advanced flexible query answering methodologies and techniques; flexible query answering methods and techniques; flexible intelligent information-oriented and network-oriented approaches; big data veracity and soft computing; flexibility in tools; and systems and miscellanea.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Flexible Query Answering Systems, FQAS 2017, held in London, UK, in June 2017. The 21 full papers presented in this book together with 4 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 43 submissions. The papers cover the following topics: foundations of flexible querying; recommendation and ranking; technologies for flexible representations and querying; knowledge discovery and information/data retrieval; intuitionistic sets; and generalized net model.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Flexible Query Answering Systems, FQAS 2011, held in Roskilde, Denmark, in October 2011. The 43 papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on logical approaches to flexible querying, fuzzy logic in spatial and temporal data modeling and querying, knowledge-based approaches, multimedia, data fuzziness, reliability and trust, information retrieval, preference queries, flexible querying of graph data, ranking, ordering and statistics, query recommendation and interpretation, as well as on fuzzy databases and applications (8 papers presented in a special session).