In today’s society the issue of security has become a crucial one. This volume brings together contributions on the use of knowledge-based technology in security applications by the world’s leading researchers in the field.

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.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the International Workshop on Coordination, Organization, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems, COIN 2009.

This book covers methods based on a combination of granular computing, rough sets, and knowledge discovery in data mining (KDD). The discussion of KDD foundations based on the rough set approach and granular computing feature illustrative applications.

This book is the ninth volume of the Transactions on Rough Sets series. The 26 papers in it introduce new advances in the foundations and applications of artificial intelligence, engineering, image processing, logic, mathematics, medicine, music, and science.