Fuzzy-rough set and fuzzy ID3 decision approaches to knowledge discovery in datasets

Fuzzy rough sets are the generalization of traditional rough sets to deal with both fuzziness and vagueness in data. The existing researches on fuzzy rough sets mainly concentrate on the construction of approximation operators. Less effort has been put on the knowledge discovery in datasets with fuzzy rough sets. This paper mainly focuses on knowledge discovery in datasets with fuzzy rough sets. After analyzing the previous works on knowledge discovery with fuzzy rough sets, we introduce formal concepts of attribute reduction with fuzzy rough sets and completely study the structure of attribute reduction

Survey of Rough and Fuzzy Hybridization

In this research existing barriers and the influence of product’s functional lifecycle on the adoption of circular revenue models in the civil and non-residential building sector was investigated. A revenue model, i.e. how revenues are generated in a business model, becomes circular if it is used to extend producer responsibility to create financial incentives for producers to benefit from making their product more circular. For example, leasing or a buy-back scheme in theory creates an incentive for producers to, amongst others, make the product last longer, to be maintained more easily and to be returned. In the Dutch national policy documents there is a call for the development of circular revenue models to extend producer responsibility in the construction sector, as the construction sector is highlighted as a key sector in terms of environmental impact. Adopting circular revenue models in the construction has so far not been research, however expectations about barriers towards adopting circular revenue models can be derived from related literature. The civil and non-residential building sub-sector of the construction sector is of special interest as this subsector has specific characteristics that were expected to create barriers towards adopting circular revenue models: ownership rights and the long functional lifecycle of products (e.g. buildings). This led to the main research question: “What are the barriers to the adoption of circular revenue models in the civil- and non-residential building sector?” The long functional lifecycle of buildings is of special interest as literature suggests that buildings are made from products with different functional lifecycles. This led to led to an additional sub question: “What is the influence of product’s functional lifecycle on the adoption of circular revenue models in the civil and non-residential building sector?” To answer both research questions, the research was split up into three phases. First, semi-structured interviews were held with practitioners, e.g. companies that have adopted, or are working on adopting, circular revenue models. Based upon the results, a second round of interviews was held with experts to better understand the barriers and gather more in-depth insights. The topics chosen for this round were based on the results from the practitioners. The third research phase was a focus group session held primarily with respondents from the expert and practitioner interviews. During the focus group preliminary results were presented and several topics were discussed. During this research 25 barriers, such as a maximum duration for contracts, short-term thinking and the adoption of measurement methods, towards adopting circular revenue models in the civil and non-residential building sector were found, which fit under five main categories in order of importance: financial, sector-specific, regulatory, organisational and technical barriers. Furthermore, seven additional barriers were found when adopting circular revenue models in which producers retain ownership. This shows that there are many barriers that hinder the adoption of circular revenue models in the civil and non-residential building sector, especially when adopting circular revenue models where producers retain ownership. Furthermore, during this research it was found that the shorter the functional lifecycle of building layers, the more easy the adoption of circular revenue models becomes, because, amongst others, financing for longer that 15 years is difficult and two parties to not like to be mutually dependents upon each other over long time periods. In increasing order of difficulty circular revenue models can be adopted to the building layers with longer functional lifecycles: space plan, services, skin and structure. During the research a consensus amongst respondents was identified that circular revenue models should not be adopted to the structure, as the functional lifecycle was too long. In addition to the functional lifecycle, four additional variables were identified that emphasise why the adoption of circular revenue models to building layers with shorter functional lifecycles is more interesting: ratio CAPEX/OPEX, flexibility of products, focus on investor or user and complexity of products

Shape analysis of a synthetic diamond

Two-dimensional images of synthetic industrial diamond particles were obtained using a camera, framegrabber and PC-based image analysis software. Various methods for shape quantification were applied, including two-dimensional shape factors, Fourier series expansion of radius as a function of angle, boundary fractal analysis, polygonal harmonics, and corner counting methods. The shape parameter found to be the most relevant was axis ratio, defined as the ratio of the minor axis to the major axis of the ellipse with the same second moments of area as the particle. Axis ratio was used in an analysis of the sorting of synthetic diamonds on a vibrating table. A model was derived based on the probability that a particle of a given axis ratio would travel to a certain bin. The model described the sorting of bulk material accurately but it was found not to be applicable if the shape mix of the feed material changed dramatically. This was attributed to the fact that the particle-particle interference was not taken into account. An expert system and a neural network were designed in an attempt to classify particles by a combination of four shape parameters. These systems gave good results when discriminating between particles from bin I and bin 9 but not for neighbouring bins or for more than two classes. The table sorting process was discussed in light of the findings and it was demonstrated that the shape distributions of sorted diamond fractions can be quantified in a useful and meaningful way

Quantifying the effects of variable selection, spatial scale and spatial data quality in marine benthic habitat mapping

Mapping benthic habitats has become critical in many contexts like conservation and management. While marine habitat mapping methods strongly rely on tools and methods from geography and geomatics, habitat mapping practitioners with a background outside of these specialized areas do not always have a full understanding of the spatial concepts behind these tools and methods. This phenomenon is amplified when marine geomorphometry, the science used to quantify seafloor terrain characteristics, is integrated into the marine habitat mapping workflow. This dissertation reviews the use of spatial concepts in the field of marine benthic habitat mapping; many concepts are poorly understood or poorly implemented in the habitat mapping workflow, among which spatial scale and spatial data quality stand out as being of particular importance. While geomorphometry is commonly used in marine benthic habitat mapping, no framework existed to test which terrain attributes should be used as surrogates of species distribution, leading to an inability to compare results from different studies. This dissertation explores different options for terrain attribute selection and proposes an optimal combination that can be used as standard in all habitat mapping studies. This selection is then tested using two approaches to benthic habitat mapping and is shown to perform better than others. Bathymetric data, the primary input for marine geomorphometry analyses and one of the main data inputs for habitat mapping, are commonly impacted by data acquisition artefacts. Very little work has been done on trying to understand how these artefacts propagate throughout the habitat mapping workflow. The impact of artefacts on the bathymetry and its derived terrain attributes is described, and it is shown that artefacts modify the spatial and statistical distributions of depth and terrain attribute values. However, when these affected data are used in habitat mapping, their impact is not always predictable. Some artefacts were found to sometimes inflate measures of accuracy and performance and sometimes decrease them. Overall, habitat maps were shown to be very sensitive to the effects of variable selection, spatial scale and data quality, and as such have serious implications when they are used to inform decision-making, for instance in marine conservation and management. This dissertation raises awareness about these issues and highlights the need for careful integration of spatial data in habitat mapping practices

Multi-scale active shape description in medical imaging

Shape description in medical imaging has become an increasingly important research field in recent years. Fast and high-resolution image acquisition methods like Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging produce very detailed cross-sectional images of the human body - shape description is then a post-processing operation which abstracts quantitative descriptions of anatomically relevant object shapes. This task is usually performed by clinicians and other experts by first segmenting the shapes of interest, and then making volumetric and other quantitative measurements. High demand on expert time and inter- and intra-observer variability impose a clinical need of automating this process. Furthermore, recent studies in clinical neurology on the correspondence between disease status and degree of shape deformations necessitate the use of more sophisticated, higher-level shape description techniques. In this work a new hierarchical tool for shape description has been developed, combining two recently developed and powerful techniques in image processing: differential invariants in scale-space, and active contour models. This tool enables quantitative and qualitative shape studies at multiple levels of image detail, exploring the extra image scale degree of freedom. Using scale-space continuity, the global object shape can be detected at a coarse level of image detail, and finer shape characteristics can be found at higher levels of detail or scales. New methods for active shape evolution and focusing have been developed for the extraction of shapes at a large set of scales using an active contour model whose energy function is regularized with respect to scale and geometric differential image invariants. The resulting set of shapes is formulated as a multiscale shape stack which is analysed and described for each scale level with a large set of shape descriptors to obtain and analyse shape changes across scales. This shape stack leads naturally to several questions in regard to variable sampling and appropriate levels of detail to investigate an image. The relationship between active contour sampling precision and scale-space is addressed. After a thorough review of modem shape description, multi-scale image processing and active contour model techniques, the novel framework for multi-scale active shape description is presented and tested on synthetic images and medical images. An interesting result is the recovery of the fractal dimension of a known fractal boundary using this framework. Medical applications addressed are grey-matter deformations occurring for patients with epilepsy, spinal cord atrophy for patients with Multiple Sclerosis, and cortical impairment for neonates. Extensions to non-linear scale-spaces, comparisons to binary curve and curvature evolution schemes as well as other hierarchical shape descriptors are discussed

Towards extracting artistic sketches and maps from digital elevation models

The main trend of computer graphics is the creation of photorealistic images however, there is increasing interest in the simulation of artistic and illustrative techniques. This thesis investigates a profile based technique for automatically extracting artistic sketches from regular grid digital elevation models. The results resemble those drawn by skilled cartographers and artists.The use of cartographic line simplification algorithms, which are usually applied to complex two-dimensional lines such as coastlines, allow a set of most important points on the terrain surface to be identified, these form the basis for sketching.This thesis also contains a wide ranging review of terrain representation techniques and suggests a new taxonomy