9th WSEAS International Conference on FUZZY SYSTEMS |Sofia, Bulgaria, May 2008 |Main Page

Professor Alexander Gegov
University of Portsmouth
School of Computing
Buckingham Building
Portsmouth PO1 3HE
United Kingdom
E-mail: alexander.gegov@port.ac.uk
http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~gegova/

Abstract: The lecture will present some novel ideas and results in fuzzy networks – an emerging research area that has been recently pioneered and promoted by the presenter. The most common attribute of a fuzzy system is a ‘black box’ model in the form of a single large rule base with poor transparency of the rules. As opposed to this, a fuzzy network is characterised by a ‘white box’ model in the form of multiple smaller rule bases with good transparency of the rules. Also, a fuzzy network is a more accurate model of a complex process than a fuzzy system due to the ability of the multiple smaller rule bases to reflect explicitly all subprocesses and the interactions among them. This superiority in terms of improved transparency and higher accuracy does not come at the expense of reduced efficiency as any fuzzy network can be transformed into an equivalent fuzzy system entirely off-line.

The following topics will be highlighted in the lecture:

capabilities of fuzzy logic, fuzzy systems and fuzzy networks to deal with uncertainty, non-linearity and topology in complex systems,

problems of fuzzy rule based systems,

foundations of fuzzy rule base networks,

mathematical modelling of nodes and connections in fuzzy networks by means of Boolean matrices, binary relations, incidence matrices and adjacency matrices,

formal operations in fuzzy networks such as horizontal, vertical and output merging and splitting of nodes,

structural properties of fuzzy networks such as associativity of horizontal, vertical and output merging and permutability of output splitting,

analysis and synthesis of feedforward and feedback fuzzy networks,

comparison between fuzzy networks and fuzzy systems in terms of accuracy, efficiency and transparancy,

theoretical importance, application areas, future developments and related research for fuzzy networks.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Alexander Gegov is Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing at the University of Portsmouth. He holds a PhD in Control Systems and a DSc in Intelligent Systems – both from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. His research interests are in the theory of computational intelligence and complex systems as well as their application for modelling, simulation and control in areas such as transport networks and the environment. He has published his main research results in complex systems in a number of international journals such as the International Journal of Control and Systems & Control Letters. He is also the sole author of two books – the first one in the Kluwer Series in Intelligent Technologies in 1996 and the second one in the Springer Series in Fuzziness and Soft Computing in 2007. He has been reviewing papers for a number of journals in computational intelligence such as IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems and the International Journal of Fuzzy Sets and Systems as well as research proposals to the Australian Research Council. He was first prize winner for young researchers of the Bulgarian Union of Scientists in 1996, invited lecturer to the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Soft Computing in 1997 and invited presenter at the House of Commons Conference on Promoting Britain’s Young Researchers in 2000. He was also tutorial presenter at the IEEE International Conference in Fuzzy Systems in 2007 and invited lecturer at the EPSRC Summer School in Complexity Science in 2007. He has been affiliate of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) since 1991 and member of the European Society for Fuzzy Logic and Technology (EUSFLAT) since 2001.