The idea of soft computing emerged in the early 1990s from the fuzzy systems c- munity, and refers to an understanding that the uncertainty, imprecision and ig- rance present in a problem should be explicitly represented and possibly even - ploited rather than either eliminated or ignored in computations. For instance, Zadeh de?ned ‘Soft Computing’ as follows: Soft computing differs from conventional (hard) computing in that, unlike hard computing, it is tolerant of imprecision, uncertainty and partial truth. In effect, the role model for soft computing is the human mind. Recently soft computing has, to some extent, become synonymous with a hybrid approach combining AI techniques including fuzzy systems, neural networks, and biologically inspired methods such as genetic algorithms. Here, however, we adopt a more straightforward de?nition consistent with the original concept. Hence, soft methods are understood as those uncertainty formalisms not part of mainstream s- tistics and probability theory which have typically been developed within the AI and decisionanalysiscommunity.Thesearemathematicallysounduncertaintymodelling methodologies which are complementary to conventional statistics and probability theory.

The idea of soft computing emerged in the early 1990s from the fuzzy systems c- munity, and refers to an understanding that the uncertainty, imprecision and ig- rance present in a problem should be explicitly represented and possibly even - ploited rather than either eliminated or ignored in computations. For instance, Zadeh de?ned ‘Soft Computing’ as follows: Soft computing differs from conventional (hard) computing in that, unlike hard computing, it is tolerant of imprecision, uncertainty and partial truth. In effect, the role model for soft computing is the human mind. Recently soft computing has, to some extent, become synonymous with a hybrid approach combining AI techniques including fuzzy systems, neural networks, and biologically inspired methods such as genetic algorithms. Here, however, we adopt a more straightforward de?nition consistent with the original concept. Hence, soft methods are understood as those uncertainty formalisms not part of mainstream s- tistics and probability theory which have typically been developed within the AI and decisionanalysiscommunity.Thesearemathematicallysounduncertaintymodelling methodologies which are complementary to conventional statistics and probability theory.

Solving practical problems often requires the integration of information and knowledge from many different sources, taking into account uncertainty and impreciseness. The 2010 International Symposium on Integrated Uncertainty Management and Applications (IUM’2010), which takes place at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), Ishikawa, Japan, between 9th–11th April, is therefore conceived as a forum for the discussion and exchange of research results, ideas for and experience of application among researchers and practitioners involved with all aspects of uncertainty modelling and management.

Solving practical problems often requires the integration of information and knowledge from many different sources, taking into account uncertainty and impreciseness. Typical situations are, for instance, when we need to simultaneously process both measurement data and expert knowledge, where the former may be uncertain and inaccurate due to randomness or error in measurements whilst the latter are often vague and imprecise due to a lack of information or human's subjective judgements. This gives rise to the demand for methods and techniques of managing and integrating various types of uncertainty within a coherent framework, so as to ultimately improve the solution to any such complex problem in practice. The 2010 International Symposium on Integrated Uncertainty Management and Applications (IUM'2010), which takes place at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), Ishikawa, Japan, between 9th-11thApril, is therefore conceived as a forum for the discussion and exchange of research results, ideas for and experience of application among researchers and practitioners involved with all aspects of uncertainty modelling and management.

The application areas of uncertainty are numerous and diverse, including all fields of engineering, computer science, systems control and finance. Determining appropriate ways and methods of dealing with uncertainty has been a constant challenge. The theme for this book is better understanding and the application of uncertainty theories. This book, with invited chapters, deals with the uncertainty phenomena in diverse fields. The book is an outgrowth of the Fourth International Symposium on Uncertainty Modeling and Analysis (ISUMA), which was held at the center of Adult Education, College Park, Maryland, in September 2003. All of the chapters have been carefully edited, following a review process in which the editorial committee scrutinized each chapter. The contents of the book are reported in twenty-three chapters, covering more than . . ... pages. This book is divided into six main sections. Part I (Chapters 1-4) presents the philosophical and theoretical foundation of uncertainty, new computational directions in neural networks, and some theoretical foundation of fuzzy systems. Part I1 (Chapters 5-8) reports on biomedical and chemical engineering applications. The sections looks at noise reduction techniques using hidden Markov models, evaluation of biomedical signals using neural networks, and changes in medical image detection using Markov Random Field and Mean Field theory. One of the chapters reports on optimization in chemical engineering processes.

Probability theory has been the only well-founded theory of uncertainty for a long time. It was viewed either as a powerful tool for modelling random phenomena, or as a rational approach to the notion of degree of belief. During the last thirty years, in areas centered around decision theory, artificial intelligence and information processing, numerous approaches extending or orthogonal to the existing theory of probability and mathematical statistics have come to the front. The common feature of those attempts is to allow for softer or wider frameworks for taking into account the incompleteness or imprecision of information. Many of these approaches come down to blending interval or fuzzy interval analysis with probabilistic methods. This book gathers contributions to the 4th International Conference on Soft methods in Probability and Statistics. Its aim is to present recent results illustrating such new trends that enlarge the statistical and uncertainty modeling traditions, towards the handling of incomplete or subjective information. It covers a broad scope ranging from philosophical and mathematical underpinnings of new uncertainty theories, with a stress on their impact in the area of statistics and data analysis, to numerical methods and applications to environmental risk analysis and mechanical engineering. A unique feature of this collection is to establish a dialogue between fuzzy random variables and imprecise probability theories.

This book features 29 peer-reviewed papers presented at the 9th International Conference on Soft Methods in Probability and Statistics (SMPS 2018), which was held in conjunction with the 5th International Conference on Belief Functions (BELIEF 2018) in Compiègne, France on September 17–21, 2018. It includes foundational, methodological and applied contributions on topics as varied as imprecise data handling, linguistic summaries, model coherence, imprecise Markov chains, and robust optimisation. These proceedings were produced using EasyChair. Over recent decades, interest in extensions and alternatives to probability and statistics has increased significantly in diverse areas, including decision-making, data mining and machine learning, and optimisation. This interest stems from the need to enrich existing models, in order to include different facets of uncertainty, like ignorance, vagueness, randomness, conflict or imprecision. Frameworks such as rough sets, fuzzy sets, fuzzy random variables, random sets, belief functions, possibility theory, imprecise probabilities, lower previsions, and desirable gambles all share this goal, but have emerged from different needs. The advances, results and tools presented in this book are important in the ubiquitous and fast-growing fields of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Indeed, an important aspect of some of the learned predictive models is the trust placed in them. Modelling the uncertainty associated with the data and the models carefully and with principled methods is one of the means of increasing this trust, as the model will then be able to distinguish between reliable and less reliable predictions. In addition, extensions such as fuzzy sets can be explicitly designed to provide interpretable predictive models, facilitating user interaction and increasing trust.