International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems

This paper is a review of uncertainty modeling techniques used in smart grid studies. The literature dealing with uncertainty from various sources in smart grid is analyzed and presented. In a modern power grid, the risk may arise due to different reasons; in-termittent renewable energy sources, uncertain consumer reactions on demand response, driving patterns of electric vehicles, etc. The paper has two objectives. First is to bring out the trends in uncertainty handling techniques used in electrical power system problems, and second to introduce the scope of new risk processing techniques with the perspective of recent smart grid issues.

Influence maximization algorithms try to select a set of individuals in social networks that are more influential. The Influence maximization problem is important in marketing and many researchers has researched on it and proposed new algorithms. All proposed algorithms are not scalable and are very time consuming for very large social networks generally. In this paper, a fast and scalable influence maximization algorithm called FSIM is proposed based on community detection. FSIM algorithm decreases number of nodes that must be examined without loss of the operations quality therefore it can find seeds quickly. FSIM can maximize influence in large social networks. Experimental results show FSIM is faster and more scalable than existing algorithms.

Fuzzy models have been increasingly used in decision-making in the energy sector to deal with many uncertainties such as lack of data and climate change. This paper presents a global energetic efficiency analysis based on the time series data of 91 countries from 1960 to 2010, using an integrated two-stage fuzzy approach. More precisely, Fuzzy DEA models for traditional constant and varying returns to scale assumptions are employed in a first stage to assess the relative efficiency of these countries over the course of time. In the second stage, fuzzy regressions based on different rule-based systems are used to predict the impact of a set of demographic and socio-economic variables on energy efficiency. Energetic efficiency appears to be explained by the countervailing forces of urbanization, wealth inequality, and social development. Thus, a transition to a more energetic efficient lower carbon society will depend on how we address certain socio-political factors, such as pursuing a more sustainable urbanization, reducing inequalities and taking into consideration socio-environmental aspects in trade agreements.

Public security has always been an important research topic. In this sense, machine learning algorithms have been used to extract knowledge from criminal databases, which usually maintain records in order to generate statistics. The automatic extraction of knowledge from such databases allows the improvement and planning of strategies to prevent and combat crimes. Accordingly, in this work different models related to public security are presented. Such models are based on clustering algorithms, on the analysis of formal concept techniques, and on the analysis of crime record data collected in the city of Mossoro, Brazil. The two types of models generated are: (i) concept lattices with crime patterns; (ii) criminal hot spot maps. We also produced a ranking of dangerousness for neighbourhoods of Mossoro. The Fuzzy K-Means clustering algorithm was used to obtain criminal hot spots, which indicate locations with high crime incidence. Formal concept analysis was used for extracting visual models describing patterns that characterize criminal activities. Such models have the form of conceptual lattices that provide graphical displays which can be used for defining strategies to combat and prevent crime. The models were first empirically evaluated and then analysed by public security experts, who provided positive feedback for their practical use. The advantages of the automatically generated models presented in this paper are many, including the short time to produce such models, the variety of different models that can be generated for specific regions and periods of days, months, or years, the graphical characteristic of such models that allow a fast analysis of them, as well as the use of large amounts of data, which are infeasible activities to be done by human experts.

In the present paper a new concept of representability is introduced, which can be applied to not total and also to intransitive relations (semiorders in particular). This idea tries to represent the orderings in the simplest manner, avoiding any unnecessary information. For this purpose, the new concept of representability is developed by means of partial functions, so that other common definitions of representability (i.e. (Richter-Peleg) multi-utility, Scott-Suppes representability, … ) are now particular cases in which the partial functions are actually functions. The paper also presents a collection of examples and propositions showing the advantages of this kind of representations, particularly in the case of partial orders and semiorders, as well as some results showing the connections between distinct kinds of representations.

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is, in literature, the most frequently used selection method generally in association with fuzzy logic. In this article some incongruities in the use of fuzzy AHP detected in the literature are presented such as improper use of the defuzzification methods and weak consistency checks of the comparison matrix that in case of scattered comparison matrix could produces results that are clearly a contradiction.

We demonstrate how even a careful definition of the third party logistics providers (3PLP) selection criteria may lead to improper results, if the appropriate methods of defuzzification are not used and the concept of “vague” is not well interpreted, both in the comparison phase and in the calculation phase.

This paper presents a novel approach based on the intuitionistic fuzzy combined ordered weighted averaging (IFCOWA) operator to solve multiple attribute group decision making (MAGDM) problems under fuzzy environment. Firstly, we introduce the new methods for determining the attribute weights and the order inducing variable of the proposed operator. With the intuitionistic fuzzy cross-entropy of aggregated attribute value to the optimum and the poorest information measures, the sort vector is constructed to derive the weights of attributes. Moreover, the order inducing variable of the attributes is obtained from their score values, by which the inducing order is roughly determined. Finally, two numerical examples about the venture investment problems are illustrated to demonstrate the applicability and efficiency of the raised approach in group decision making problem.

Please send your abstracts (or copies of papers that you want to see reviewed here) to vladik@utep.edu, or by regular mail to Vladik Kreinovich, Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968, USA.