In an era defined by the deluge of data, navigating the complexities of decision-making under conditions of uncertainty has emerged as a formidable challenge for scholars and practitioners alike. The sheer volume and velocity of information inundating decision-makers often leads to paralysis or misguided choices, amplifying the risks inherent in uncertain environments. Granular Computing and Big Data Advancements provides insights and solutions in this challenging landscape. The impact of Granular Computing and Big Data Advancements reverberates across the research community, offering a cohesive resource that bridges the gap between theory and practice. With its interdisciplinary approach and emphasis on innovation, the book fosters collaboration and empowers scholars to tackle complex challenges head-on. Whether researchers seek novel methodologies, practitioners aim to enhance decision-making processes, or students embark on their academic journey, this publication serves as a cornerstone in the quest for effective decision-making amidst the uncertainties of the modern world.

Knowledge-based systems, fully integrated with software, have become essential enablers for both science and commerce. But current software methodologies, tools and techniques are not robust or reliable enough for the demands of a constantly changing and evolving market, and many promising approaches have proved to be no more than case-oriented methods that are not fully automated. This book presents the proceedings of the 17th international conference on New Trends in Intelligent Software Methodology, Tools and Techniques (SoMeT18) held in Granada, Spain, 26-28 September 2018. The SoMeT conferences provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and experience, foster new directions in software development methodologies and related tools and techniques, and focus on exploring innovations, controversies, and the current challenges facing the software engineering community. The 80 selected papers included here are divided into 13 chapters, and cover subjects as diverse as intelligent software systems; medical informatics and bioinformatics; artificial intelligence techniques; social learning software and sentiment analysis; cognitive systems and neural analytics; and security, among other things. Offering a state-of-the-art overview of methodologies, tools and techniques, this book will be of interest to all those whose work involves the development or application of software.

As technology continues to revolutionise today’s economy, Big Data, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency are rapidly transforming themselves into mainstream functions within the financial services industry. This book examines each concept individually, analysing the opportunities and challenges they bring and exploring the potential for future development. The authors further evaluate the fusion of these three important products of the FinTech revolution, illustrating their combined influence on the digital economy. Providing a comprehensive analysis of three innovative technologies, this timely book will appeal to scholars researching innovation in the finance industry and financial services technology more specifically.

This book constitutes the refereed conference proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Rough Sets, Fuzzy Sets, Data Mining and Granular Computing, RSFDGrC 2015, held in Tianjin, China in November 2015 as one of the co-located conference of the 2015 Joint Rough Set Symposium, JRS 2015. The 44 papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 97 submissions. The papers in this volume cover topics such as rough sets: the experts speak; generalized rough sets; rough sets and graphs; rough and fuzzy hybridization; granular computing; data mining and machine learning; three-way decisions; IJCRS 2015 data challenge.

This book covers IoT and Big Data from a technical and business point of view. The book explains the design principles, algorithms, technical knowledge, and marketing for IoT systems. It emphasizes applications of big data and IoT. It includes scientific algorithms and key techniques for fusion of both areas. Real case applications from different industries are offering to facilitate ease of understanding the approach. The book goes on to address the significance of security algorithms in combing IoT and big data which is currently evolving in communication technologies. The book is written for researchers, professionals, and academicians from interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary areas. The readers will get an opportunity to know the conceptual ideas with step-by-step pragmatic examples which makes ease of understanding no matter the level of the reader.

Big Data, Code and the Discrete City explores how digital technologies are gradually changing the way in which the public space is designed by architects, managed by policymakers and experienced by individuals. Smart city technologies are superseding the traditional human experience that has characterised the making of the public space until today. This book examines how computers see the public space and the effect of algorithms, artificial intelligences and automated processes on the human experience in public spaces. Divided into three parts, the first part of this book examines the notion of discreteness in its origins and applications to computer sciences. The second section presents a dual perspective: it explores the ways in which public spaces are constructed by the computer-driven logic and then translated into control mechanisms, design strategies and software-aided design. This perspective also describes the way in which individuals perceive this new public space, through its digital logic, and discrete mechanisms (from Wi-Fi coverage to self-tracking). Finally, in the third part, this book scrutinises the discrete logic with which computers operate, and how this is permeating into aspects of city life. This book is valuable for anyone interested in urban studies and digital technologies, and more specifically in big data, urban informatics and public space.

This book offers a comprehensive treatise on the recent pursuits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) by casting the crucial features of interpretability and explainability in the original framework of Granular Computing. The innovative perspective established with the aid of information granules provides a high level of human centricity and transparency central to the development of AI constructs. The chapters reflect the breadth of the area and cover recent developments in the methodology, advanced algorithms and applications of XAI to visual analytics, knowledge representation, learning and interpretation. The book appeals to a broad audience including researchers and practitioners interested in gaining exposure to the rapidly growing body of knowledge in AI and intelligent systems.

Information granules are fundamental conceptual entities facilitating perception of complex phenomena and contributing to the enhancement of human centricity in intelligent systems. The formal frameworks of information granules and information granulation comprise fuzzy sets, interval analysis, probability, rough sets, and shadowed sets, to name only a few representatives. Among current developments of Granular Computing, interesting options concern information granules of higher order and of higher type. The higher order information granularity is concerned with an effective formation of information granules over the space being originally constructed by information granules of lower order. This construct is directly associated with the concept of hierarchy of systems composed of successive processing layers characterized by the increasing levels of abstraction. This idea of layered, hierarchical realization of models of complex systems has gained a significant level of visibility in fuzzy modeling with the well-established concept of hierarchical fuzzy models where one strives to achieve a sound tradeoff between accuracy and a level of detail captured by the model and its level of interpretability. Higher type information granules emerge when the information granules themselves cannot be fully characterized in a purely numerical fashion but instead it becomes convenient to exploit their realization in the form of other types of information granules such as type-2 fuzzy sets, interval-valued fuzzy sets, or probabilistic fuzzy sets. Higher order and higher type of information granules constitute the focus of the studies on Granular Computing presented in this study. The book elaborates on sound methodologies of Granular Computing, algorithmic pursuits and an array of diverse applications and case studies in environmental studies, option price forecasting, and power engineering.

Welcome to the 12th International Conference on Rough Sets, Fuzzy Sets, Data Mining and Granular Computing (RSFDGrC 2009), held at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, India, during December 15-18, 2009. RSFDGrC is a series of conferences spanning over the last 15 years. It investigates the me- ing points among the four major areas outlined in its title. This year, it was co-organized with the Third International Conference on Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence (PReMI 2009), which provided additional means for multi-facetedinteractionofboth scientists andpractitioners.Itwasalsothe core component of this year's Rough Set Year in India project. However, it remained a fully international event aimed at building bridges between countries. The ?rst sectin contains the invited papers and a short report on the abo- mentioned project. Let us note that all the RSFDGrC 2009 plenary speakers, Ivo Düntsch, Zbigniew Suraj, Zhongzhi Shi, Sergei Kuznetsov, Qiang Shen, and Yukio Ohsawa, contributed with the full-length articles in the proceedings. The remaining six sections contain 56 regular papers that were selected out of 130 submissions, each peer-reviewed by three PC members. We thank the authors for their high-quality papers submitted to this volume and regret that many deserving papers could not be accepted because of our urge to maintain strict standards. It is worth mentioning that there was quite a good number of papers on the foundations of rough sets and fuzzy sets, many of them authored byIndianresearchers.ThefuzzysettheoryhasbeenpopularinIndiaforalonger time. Now, we can see the rising interest in the rough set theory.

During the past few years, data mining has grown rapidly in visibility and importance within information processing and decision analysis. This is par ticularly true in the realm of e-commerce, where data mining is moving from a "nice-to-have" to a "must-have" status. In a different though related context, a new computing methodology called granular computing is emerging as a powerful tool for the conception, analysis and design of information/intelligent systems. In essence, data mining deals with summarization of information which is resident in large data sets, while granular computing plays a key role in the summarization process by draw ing together points (objects) which are related through similarity, proximity or functionality. In this perspective, granular computing has a position of centrality in data mining. Another methodology which has high relevance to data mining and plays a central role in this volume is that of rough set theory. Basically, rough set theory may be viewed as a branch of granular computing. However, its applications to data mining have predated that of granular computing.