Special Sessions

Special Sessions proposals are now closed.

Instructions

For submission of contributions to the Special Sessions, please refer to the Submissions page.

Reviewing process

Papers submitted to special sessions will be regularly reviewed by at least two program committee members. The organizers will chair their special sessions at the conference.

List of EUSFLAT 2013 Special Sessions

  • Advances in Bipolarity Applied to Databases and Information Systems

    Organizers: Allel Hadjali, Ludovic Liétardand and Henri Prade

    In the very recent years, bipolar modeling of preferences and knowledge has attracted the interest of many researchers, especially, in Databases and Information Systems fields. The idea of bipolarity refers to the distinction between what is regarded as positive and what is regarded as negative. When bipolarity is encountered in preference representations: (i) negative preferences express what is (more or less, or completely) impossible, and by complementation, they specify flexible constraints restricting tolerated values ; (ii) positive preferences are less compulsory, and rather express wishes. Research issues in this area cover different aspects related, for instance, to modeling, merging, rank-ordering, learning, etc. This special session will be an exciting opportunity to exchange ideas and discuss recent results about bipolarity and/or its application in Databases and Information Systems fields.

  • Decision Analysis and Support in Risk Management with Soft Computing

    Organizers: Jie Lu, Javier Montero, J. Tinguaro Rodríguez, Guangquan Zhang, Vahid Behbood

    In this EUSFLAT 2013 special session we pretend to bring decisions analysis theories, methodologies and support tools based upon soft computing that are being considered to be applied in natural and technological risk management, humanitarian logistics, safety and security information analysis, situation awareness, warning systems, as well as policy support for society at large. We are particularly interested in papers on new developments of soft computing techniques on risk management and decision making. We will also encourage papers on how applications of existing soft computing methodologies benefit our decision making activities, risk management and various prediction and warning systems. Below are some topics of this special session:
    – Intelligent decision support systems with risk analysis
    – Uncertain information management in risk analysis for decision support
    – Business risk analysis in theory and practice with soft computing
    – Risk management systems with computational intelligent techniques
    – Intelligent decision making under risk
    – Risk-based decision making and policy support systems
    – Risk sensitive decision making systems
    – Risk assessment for decision making in uncertain environments
    – Data mining, information classification and clustering for risk management
    – Fuzzy decision support systems for risk analysis
    – Fuzzy risk analysis systems
    – Fuzzy decision models in early warning systems
    – Situation awareness modeling and methodology with soft computing

  • Fuzzy Implication Functions

    Organizers: Michał Baczyński, Sebastià Massanet

    Fuzzy Implication Functions are a generalization of the classical two-valued implication to the infinite-valued setting.
    They play an important role both in the theory and application, as can be seen from their use in, among others, Multi-Valued Logic, Approximate Reasoning, Fuzzy Control, Image Processing and Data Analysis.
    The goal of this invited session is to bring together researchers interested in recent advances in the theory of fuzzy implications, concerning, among others, characterizations, representations, generalizations and their relationships with fuzzy negations, triangular norms, uninorms and other fuzzy logic connectives.

  • Fuzzy Sets and Fuzzy Logic and e-Learning

    Organizers: Rudolf Seising, Dr. Andrea Molinari, Prof. Dr. Luigi Colazzo, Prof. Dr. Mario Fedrizzi

    This special session will combine research of two interesting fields.
    With the rise of new, robust technological environments for e-Learning, it is an obvious question how Fuzzy Sets and Fuzzy Logic can be used in this field.
    We are inviting papers on: “Learning objects, performance monitoring, quality evaluation and evaluation methods in e-learning”, “Hardware/Software for Learning and Teaching”, “Advanced Approaches in training”, “Learning Methodologies”, “Learning Management Systems, Virtual Communities for Learning”, “Situated Learning Environments, Adaptive Educational Systems”, “Adaptive Recommendation Systems”.

  • Fuzzy Transform and its Applications

    Organizers: Irina Perfilieva, Petra Hodakova

    The original motivation for the fuzzy (F-) transform came
    from fuzzy modeling. It is a universal mathematical method that replaces modeling with fuzzy IF-THEN rules by modeling in a linear space induced by fuzzy partitions. Most applications of the F-transform are realized in data and image processing: time series analysis and forecasting, image fusion, compression, reduction, magnification and reconstruction are their successful examples. The first degree F-transform has been successfully used in, e.g.,  edge detection.
    The aim of this special session is to present recent developments and trends in the F- (and similar) transforms. We expect that this special session will collect the fundamental and theoretical results, show other than above mentioned applications and overview the existing ones.

  • Interpretable Fuzzy Systems

    Organizers: Corrado Mencar, Ciro Castiello, José M. Alonso, Luis Magdalena

    The aim of this special session is to discuss and disseminate the most recent advancements focused on interpretability of fuzzy systems. Many fuzzy algorithms and models are indeed aimed at extracting knowledge from data, and the acquired knowledge must be usually communicated to users. However, as far as such knowledge is difficult to understand by users, the acceptance of such methods may be seriously compromised. Interpretability must be the central point on system modeling. In fact, some of the hottest and most recent research topics like Precisiated Natural Language, Computing With Words, and Human Centric Computing strongly rely on the interpretability of the designed models.
    Interpretability is therefore a key property of intelligent systems of practical use, but its human-centric character poses difficult challenges both in design and evaluation. The topics of interest of this special session include (but are not limited to): Characterizations of interpretability; Learning methods for interpretable models; Interpretability evaluation and improvements; Relations between interpretability and other criteria (such as accuracy, stability, etc.); Design issues; Successful applications of interpretable fuzzy models; and so on.

  • Learning from Static and Dynamic Data with Fuzzy Techniques

    Organizers: Abdelhamid Bouchachia, Edwin Lughofer, Daniel Sanchez, Moamar Sayed-Mouchaweh

    The special session on Learning from Static and Dynamic Data with Fuzzy Techniques to be held as part of the EUSFLAT’2013 conference in Milano focusses on new methods, algorithms and challenges related to data analysis and modeling.

    Specifically the special session surveys the recent advances in model extraction and mining of patterns and knowledge from (static) data using fuzzy methodologies (fuzzy logic, fuzzy sets and fuzzy systems) in connection with machine learning approaches. A special emphasis will be placed on learning methods for data streams that enable incremental/online learning of the model’s parameters, evolving structure, and adaptive process of knowledge induction to deal with the (non-stationary) dynamics of data. The relevance of these methods in real-world applications has been illustrated in various areas such as web mining, Big Data, dynamic social networks, sensor networks, industrial process monitoring, etc.

  • Mathematical Fuzzy Logic

    Organizers: Stefano Aguzzoli, Tommaso Flaminio, Brunella Gerla

    Mathematical Fuzzy Logic is a subdiscipline of Mathematical Logic which studies the notion of comparative truth. Many-valued logics, fuzzy logics, and their algebraic semantics represent the formal tools to deal with vague phenomena and events.
    Theories of uncertainty, that are built over those logico-algebraic structures for many-valued events, are adequate tools to model those situations in which a quantitative evaluation of the combination of uncertainty and imprecision is needed.
    This special session will focus on (but will not limited to) the following topics: “Algebras of many-valued logics”, “Proof-systems of many-valued logics”, “Probability of non-classical events”, “Game semantics of many-valued logics”, “Topological dualities for many-valued logics”.

  • Representing and Managing Vagueness: Different Scenarios, Different Tools

    Organizers: Davide Ciucci, Chris Cornelis, Jesús Medina, Dominik Slezak

    The notion of vagueness has been extensively analysed in the last decades by philosophers, logicians and computer scientists. Here we are interested in the vagueness originated by different characteristics and flaws in information: incompleteness, imprecision, graduality, granularity, contradiction between agents, etc. For each of these aspects one (or more) specific tool has been introduced in literature: fuzzy sets, rough sets, possibility theory, formal concept analysis, interval analysis, etc. Further, when more than one form of vagueness are presented at the same time, it seems natural to fuse such tools, as in the fuzzy rough set case. The special session is devoted to collect all contributions that deal with scenarios leading to a form of vagueness and tools to represent and manage it. In particular, all critical discussions, comparisons among two or more forms of vagueness and/or comparisons and fusion of two or more tools are welcome. The not exhaustive list of topics includes: fuzzy sets and logic; rough sets; fuzzy rough sets; interval-valued fuzzy sets; formal concept analysis; possibility theory; supervaluations; near sets; interval analysis; grey sets; soft sets; vague sets; epistemic logic.

  • Soft Computing and the Human Sciences

    Organizers: Rudolf Seising, Marco Elio Tabacchi

    What we still lack, and lack rather acutely, are methods for dealing with systems which are too complex or too ill-defined to admit of precise analysis. Such systems pervade life sciences, social sciences, philosophy, economics, psychology and many other “soft” fields. (L. A. Zadeh: Towards a theory of fuzzy systems. In: R.E. Kalman, N. DeClaris (Eds.), Aspects of Network and System Theory, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, pp. 469-490.)

    More than 40 years after Zadeh’s words above, we are still hard working to establish the research area on “Soft Computing in Humanities and Social Sciences”. In this special session we will point aspects of Soft Computing and of the so-called “human sciences” (humanities, medicine, social sciences and arts). We ask for the meaning of “softening” and “softness” of computing and of sciences.Relationships of soft computing on the one hand and logics, linguistics, cognitive science,psychology, philosophy, medicine, arts and other areas on the one hand have not been considered and discussed very intensively!
    Examples of the special sessions subjects are Ordinary Reasoning, Folk Epistemology,Vagueness, Objectivity, Causality, Complexity, Knowledge and other concepts.

  • Soft Computing in Database Management and Information Retrieval

    Organizers: Guy De Tré, Antoon Bronselaer, Janusz Kacprzyk, Sławomir Zadrożny

    Soft computing techniques can play an important role in extending the facilities and improve the effectiveness of database and information retrieval systems by coping with imperfection of the information dealt with. Although in the last 20 years database querying as well as information retrieval techniques have been enriched and extended with soft computing methods, their potential is still to be fully exploited. In particular, some hot topics include flexible querying, the handling of textual information, semi-structured data modeling, the use of thesauri and ontologies, the handling of context, the management of multimedia information, knowledge discovery, intelligent information systems and indexing and performance issues. The objective of the special session is to provide an opportunity for exchanging ideas related to the application of fuzzy logic and soft computing in the above mentioned areas.