Rainstorm Forecasting By Mining Heterogeneous Remote Sensed Datasets

This chapter presents an automatic meteorological data mining system based on analyzing and mining heterogeneous remote sensed image datasets, with which it is possible to forecast potential rainstorms in advance. A two-phase data mining method employing machine learning techniques, including the C4.5 decision tree algorithm and dependency network analysis, is proposed, by which a group of derivation rules and a conceptual model for metrological environment factors are generated to assist the automatic weather forecasting task. Experimental results have shown that the system reduces the heavy workload of manual weather forecasting and provides meaningful interpretations to the forecasted results.

Finding Explicit and Implicit Knowledge

This chapter discusses two different types of text data mining focusing on the biomedical literature. One deals with explicit information or facts written in articles, and the other targets implicit information or hypotheses inferred from explicit information. A major difference between the two is that the former is bound to the contents within the literature, whereas the latter goes beyond existing knowledge and generates potential scientific hypotheses. As concrete examples applied to real-world problems, this chapter looks at two applications of text data mining: gene functional annotation and genetic association discovery, both considered to have significant practical importance.

Data Mining Meets Internet and Web Performance

Data mining (DM) is the key process in knowledge discovery. Many theoretical and practical DM applications can be found in science and engineering. However there are still such areas where data mining techniques are still at early stage of development and application. In particular, an unsatisfactory progress is observed in DM applications in the analysis of Internet and Web performance issues. This chapter gives the background of network performance measurement and presents our approaches, namely Internet Performance Mining and Web Performance Mining as the ways of DM application to Internet and Web performance issues. The authors present real-life examples of the analysis where explored data sets were collected with the aid of two network measurement systems WING and MWING developed at our laboratory.

Predicting Similarity of Web Services Using WordNet

As vast numbers of web services have been developed over a broad range of functionalities, it becomes a challenging task to find relevant or similar web services using web services registry such as UDDI. Current UDDI search uses keywords from web service and company information in its registry to retrieve web services. This method cannot fully capture user’s needs and may miss out on potential matches. Underlying functionality and semantics of web services need to be considered. This chapter introduces a methodology for predicting similarity of web services by integrating hierarchical clustering, nearest neighbor classification, and algorithms for natural language processing using WordNet. It can be used to facilitate the development of intelligent applications for retrieving web services with imprecise or vague requests. The authors explore semantics of web services using WSDL operation names and parameter names along with WordNet. They compute semantic interface similarity of web services and use this data to generate clusters. Then, they represent each cluster by a set of characteristic operations to predict similarity of new web services using nearest neighbor approach. The empirical result is promising.

Computational Intelligence Clustering for Dynamic Video Watermarking

Multimedia products today broadcast over networks and are typically compressed and transmitted from host to client. Adding watermarks to the compressed domain ensures content integrity, protects copyright, and can be detected without quality degradation. Hence, watermarking video data in the compressed domain is important. This work develops a novel video watermarking system with the aid of computational intelligence, in which motion vectors define watermark locations. The number of watermark bits varies dynamically among frames. The current study employs several intelligent computing methods including K-means clustering, Fuzzy C-means clustering, Swarm intelligent clustering and Swarm intelligence based Fuzzy C-means (SI-FCM) clustering to determine the motion vectors and watermark positions. This study also discusses and compares the advantages and disadvantages among various approaches. The proposed scheme has three merits. First, the proposed watermarking strategy does not involve manually setting watermark bit locations. Second, the number of embedded motion vector clusters differs according to the motion characteristics of each frame. Third, the proposed special exclusive-OR operation closely relates the watermark bit to the video context, preventing attackers from discovering the real watermark length of each frame. Therefore, the proposed approach is highly secure. The proposed watermark-extracting scheme immediately detects forgery through changes in motion vectors. Experimental results reveal that the watermarked video retains satisfactory quality with very low degradation.

A Novel Neural Fuzzy Network Using a Hybrid Evolutionary Learning Algorithm

This chapter presents an evolutionary neural fuzzy network, designed using the functional-link-based neural fuzzy network (FLNFN) and a new evolutionary learning algorithm. This new evolutionary learning algorithm is based on a hybrid of cooperative particle swarm optimization and cultural algorithm. It is thus called cultural cooperative particle swarm optimization (CCPSO). The proposed CCPSO method, which uses cooperative behavior among multiple swarms, can increase the global search capacity using the belief space. Cooperative behavior involves a collection of multiple swarms that interact by exchanging information to solve a problem. The belief space is the information repository in which the individuals can store their experiences such that other individuals can learn from them indirectly. The proposed FLNFN model uses functional link neural networks as the consequent part of the fuzzy rules. This chapter uses orthogonal polynomials and linearly independent functions in a functional expansion of the functional link neural networks. The FLNFN model can generate the consequent part of a nonlinear combination of input variables. Finally, the proposed functional-link-based neural fuzzy network with cultural cooperative particle swarm optimization (FLNFN-CCPSO) is adopted in several predictive applications. Experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed CCPSO method performs well in predicting the time series problems.

The Hopfield-Tank Neural Network for the Mobile Agent Planning Problem

Mobile agent planning (MAP) is one of the most important techniques in the mobile computing paradigm to complete a given task in the most efficient manner. To tackle this challenging NP-hard problem, Hopfield-Tank neural network is modified to provide a dynamic approach which not only optimizes the cost of mobile agents in a spatio-temporal computing environment, but also satisfies the location-based constraints such as the starting and ending nodes of the routing sequence which must be the home site of the traveling mobile agent. Meanwhile, the energy function is reformulated into a Lyapunov function to guarantee the convergence to a stable state and the existence of valid solutions. Moreover, the objective function is designed to estimate the completion time of a valid solution and to predict the optimal routing path. This method can produce solutions rapidly that are very close to the minimum cost of the location-based and time-constrained distributed MAP problem.

Weights Direct Determination of Feedforward Neural Networks without Iterative BP-Training

Artificial neural networks (ANN), especially with error back-propagation (BP) training algorithms, have been widely investigated and applied in various science and engineering fields. However, the BP algorithms are essentially gradient-based iterative methods, which adjust the neural-network weights to bring the network input/output behavior into a desired mapping by taking a gradient-based descent direction. This kind of iterative neural-network (NN) methods has shown some inherent weaknesses, such as, 1) the possibility of being trapped into local minima, 2) the difficulty in choosing appropriate learning rates, and 3) the inability to design the optimal or smallest NN-structure. To resolve such weaknesses of BP neural networks, we have asked ourselves a special question: Could neural-network weights be determined directly without iterative BP-training? The answer appears to be YES, which is demonstrated in this chapter with three positive but different examples. In other words, a new type of artificial neural networks with linearly-independent or orthogonal activation functions, is being presented, analyzed, simulated and verified by us, of which the neural-network weights and structure could be decided directly and more deterministically as well (in comparison with usual conventional BP neural networks).

Network Based Fusion of Global and Local Information in Time Series Prediction with the Use of Soft-Computing Techniques

Forecasting data from a time series is to make predictions for the future from available data. Thus, such a problem can be viewed as a traditional data mining problem because it is to extract rules for prediction from available data. There are two kinds of forecasting approaches. Most traditional forecasting approaches are based on all available data including the nearest data and far away data with respect to the time. These approaches are referred to as the global prediction scheme in our study. On the other hand, there also exist some prediction approaches that only construct their prediction model based on the most recent data. Such approaches are referred to as the local prediction schemes. Those local prediction approaches seem to have good prediction ability in some cases but due to their local characteristics, they usually fail in general for long term prediction. In this chapter, the authors shall detail those ideas and use several commonly used models, especially those model free estimators, such as neural networks, fuzzy systems, grey systems, etc., to explain their effects. Another issues discussed in the chapter is about multi-step predictions. From the author’s study, it can be found that those often-used global prediction schemes can have fair performance in both one-step-ahead predictions and multi-step predictions. On the other hand, good local prediction schemes can have better performance in the one-step-ahead prediction when compared to those global prediction schemes, but usually have awful performance for multi-step predictions. In this chapter, the authors shall introduce several approaches of combining local and global prediction results to improve the prediction performance.

Neuro-Fuzzy System Modeling

Neuro-fuzzy modeling is a computing paradigm of soft computing and very efficient for system modeling problems. It integrates two well-known modeling approaches of neural networks and fuzzy systems, and therefore possesses advantages of them, i.e., learning capability, robustness, human-like reasoning, and high understandability. Up to now, many approaches have been proposed for neuro-fuzzy modeling. However, it still exists many problems need to be solved. In this chapter, the authors firstly give an introduction to neuro-fuzzy system modeling. Secondly, some basic concepts of neural networks, fuzzy systems, and neuro-fuzzy systems are introduced. Also, they review and discuss some important literatures about neuro-fuzzy modeling. Thirdly, the issue for solving two most important problems of neuro-fuzzy modeling is considered, i.e., structure identification and parameter identification. Therefore, the authors present two approaches to solve these two problems, respectively. Fourthly, the future and emerging trends of neuro-fuzzy modeling is discussed. Besides, the possible research issues about neuro-fuzzy modeling are suggested. Finally, the authors give a conclusion.