Towards Better Performance in the Face of Input Uncertainty while Maintaining Interpretability in AI

Uncertainty is a pervasive element of many real-world applications and very often existing sources of uncertainty (e.g. atmospheric conditions, economic parameters or precision of measurement devices) have a detrimental impact on the input and ultimately results of decision-support systems. Thus, the ability to handle input uncertainty is a valuable component of real-world decision-support systems. There is a vast amount of literature on handling of uncertainty through decision-support systems. While they handle uncertainty and deliver a good performance, providing an insight into the decision process (e.g. why or how results are produced) is another important asset in terms of having trust in or providing a ‘debugging’ process in given decisions. Fuzzy set theory provides the basis for Fuzzy Logic Systems which are often associated with the ability for handling uncertainty and possessing mechanisms for providing a degree of interpretability. Specifically, Non-Singleton Fuzzy Logic Systems are essential in dealing with uncertainty that affects input which is one of the main sources of uncertainty in real-world systems. Therefore, in this thesis, we comprehensively explore enhancing non-singleton fuzzy logic systems capabilities considering both capturing-handling uncertainty and also maintaining interpretability. To that end the following three key aspects are investigated; (i) to faithfully map input uncertainty to outputs of systems, (ii) to propose a new framework to provide the ability for dynamically adapting system on-the-fly in changing real-world environments. (iii) to maintain level of interpretability while leveraging performance of systems. The first aspect is to leverage mapping uncertainty from input to outputs of systems through the interaction between input and antecedent fuzzy sets i.e. firing strengths. In the context of Non-Singleton Fuzzy Logic Systems, recent studies have shown that the standard technique for determining firing strengths risks information loss in terms of the interaction of the input uncertainty and antecedent fuzzy sets. This thesis explores and puts forward novel approaches to generating firing strengths which faithfully map the uncertainty affecting system inputs to outputs. Time-series forecasting experiments are used to evaluate the proposed alternative firing strength generating technique under different levels of input uncertainty. The analysis of the results shows that the proposed approach can also be a suitable method to generate appropriate firing levels which provide the ability to map different uncertainty levels from input to output of FLS that are likely to occur in real-world circumstances. The second aspect is to provide dynamic adaptive behaviours to systems at run-time in changing conditions which are common in real-world environments. Traditionally, in the fuzzification step of Non-Singleton Fuzzy Logic Systems, approaches are generally limited to the selection of a single type of input fuzzy sets to capture the input uncertainty, whereas input uncertainty levels tend to be inherently varying over time in the real-world at run-time. Thus, in this thesis, input uncertainty is modelled -where it specifically arises- in an online manner which can provide an adaptive behaviour to capture varying input uncertainty levels. The framework is presented to generate Type-1 or Interval Type-2 input fuzzy sets, called ADaptive Online Non-singleton fuzzy logic System (ADONiS). In the proposed framework, an uncertainty estimation technique is utilised on a sequence of observations to continuously update the input fuzzy sets of non-singleton fuzzy logic systems. Both the type-1 and interval type-2 versions of the ADONiS frameworks remove the limitation of the selection of a specific type of input fuzzy sets. Also this framework enables input fuzzy sets to be adapted to unknown uncertainty levels which is not perceived at the design stage of the model. Time-series forecasting experiments are implemented and results show that our proposed framework provides performance advantages over traditional counterpart approaches, particularly in environments that include high variation in noise levels, which are common in real-world applications. In addition, the real-world medical application study is designed to test the deployability of the ADONiS framework and to provide initial insight in respect to its viability in replacing traditional approaches. The third aspect is to maintain levels of interpretability, while increasing performance of systems. When a decision-support model delivers a good performance, providing an insight of the decision process is also an important asset in terms of trustworthiness, safety and ethical aspects etc. Fuzzy logic systems are considered to possess mechanisms which can provide a degree of interpretability. Traditionally, while optimisation procedures provide performance benefits in fuzzy logic systems, they often cause alterations in components (e.g. rule set, parameters, or fuzzy partitioning structures) which can lead to higher accuracy but commonly do not consider the interpretability of the resulting model. In this thesis, the state of the art in fuzzy logic systems interpretability is advanced by capturing input uncertainty in the fuzzification -where it arises- and by handling it the inference engine step. In doing so, while the performance increase is achieved, the proposed methods limit any optimisation impact to the fuzzification and inference engine steps which protects key components of FLSs (e.g. fuzzy sets, rule parameters etc.) and provide the ability to maintain the given level of interpretability

Exploring subsethood to determine firing strength in non-singleton fuzzy logic systems

Real world environments face a wide range of sources of noise and uncertainty. Thus, the ability to handle various uncertainties, including noise, becomes an indispensable element of automated decision making. Non-Singleton Fuzzy Logic Systems (NSFLSs) have the potential to tackle uncertainty within the design of fuzzy systems. The firing strength has a significant role in the accuracy of FLSs, being based on the interaction of the input and antecedent fuzzy sets. Recent studies have shown that the standard technique for determining firing strengths risks substantial information loss in terms of the interaction of the input and antecedents. Recently, this issue has been addressed through exploration of alternative approaches which employ the centroid of the intersection (cen-NS) and the similarity (sim-NS) between input and antecedent fuzzy sets. This paper identifies potential shortcomings in respect to the previously introduced similarity-based NSFLSs in which firing strength is defined as the similarity between an input FS and an antecedent. To address these shortcomings, this paper explores the potential of the subsethood measure to generate a more suitable firing level (sub-NS) in NSFLSs featuring various noise levels. In the experiment, the basic waiter tipping fuzzy logic system is used to examine the behaviour of sub-NS in comparison with the current approaches. Analysis of the results shows that the sub-NS approach can lead to more stable behaviour in real world applications

ADONiS - Adaptive Online Non-Singleton Fuzzy Logic Systems

Non-Singleton Fuzzy Logic Systems (NSFLSs) have the potential to capture and handle input noise within the design of input fuzzy sets. In this paper, we propose an online learning method which utilises a sequence of observations to continuously update the input Fuzzy Sets (FSs) of an NSFLS, thus providing an improved capacity to deal with variations in the level of input-affecting noise, common in real-world applications. The method removes the requirement for both a priori knowledge of noise levels or relying on offline training procedures to define input FS parameters. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed ADaptive, ONline Non-Singleton (ADONiS) Fuzzy Logic System (FLS) framework represents the first end-to-end framework to adaptively configure non-singleton input FSs. The latter is achieved through online uncertainty detection applied to a sliding window of observations. Since real-world environments are influenced by a broad range of noise sources, which can vary greatly in magnitude over time, the proposed technique for combining online determination of noise levels with associated adaptation of input FSs provides an efficient and effective solution which elegantly models input uncertainty in the FLS's input FSs, without requiring changes in any other part (e.g. antecedents, rules or consequents) of the FLS. In this paper, two common chaotic time series (Mackey-Glass, Lorenz) are used to perform prediction experiments to demonstrate and evaluate the proposed framework. Results indicate that the proposed adaptive NSFLS framework provides significant advantages, particularly in environments that include high variation in noise levels, which are common in real-world applications

An Expandable, Contextualized and Data-Driven Indoor Thermal Comfort Model

Continuous discrepancies in building performance predictions creates an ongoing inclination to link contextualized, real-time inputs and users’ feedback for not only building control systems but also for simulation tools. It is now seeming necessary to develop a model that can record, find meaningful relationship and predict more holistic human interactions in buildings. Such model could create capacity for feedback and control with a level of intelligence. Fuzzy Logic Systems (FLSs) are known as robust tools in decision making and developing models in an efficient manner. Considering this capability, in this paper, FLSs is implemented to make a thermal comfort model in an educational building in the UK. Such implementation has an ability to respond to some identified desires of developers and performance assessors in addressing uncertainty in thermal comfort models. The results demonstrate the proposed method is practical to simulate the value of comfort level based on the input data

Noise parameter estimation for non-singleton fuzzy logic systems

Real-world environments face a wide range of noise (uncertainty) sources and gaining insight into the level of noise is a critical part of many applications. While Non-Singleton Fuzzy Logic Systems (NSFLSs), in particular recently introduced advanced variants such as centroid-based NSFLSs have the capacity to handle known quantities of uncertainty, thus far, the actual level of uncertainty has had to be defined a priori - i.e. prior to run time of a system or controller. This paper does not focus on such advances within the architecture of NSFLSs, but focuses on a novel two-stage approach for uncertainty handling in fuzzy logic systems which integrates: (i) estimation of noise levels and (ii) the appropriate handling of the noise based on this estimate, by means of a dynamically configured NSFLS. As initial evaluation of the approach, two chaotic nonlinear time series (Mackey-Glass and Lorenz), as well as a real-world Darwin sea level pressure series prediction fuzzy logic systems are implemented and compared to commonly used procedures. The results indicate that the proposed strategy of integrating uncertainty/noise estimation with the capacity of non-singleton fuzzy logic systems has the potential to deliver performance benefits in real-world applications without requiring a priori information on noise levels and thus delivers a first step towards smart, noise-adaptive non-singleton fuzzy logic systems and controllers

Predictability of higher heating value of biomass feedstocks via proximate and ultimate analyses – A comprehensive study of artificial neural network applications

Higher heating value (HHV) is a key characteristic for the assessment and selection of biomass feedstocks as a fuel source. The HHV is usually measured using an adiabatic oxygen bomb calorimeter; however, this method can be time consuming and expensive. In response, researchers have attempted to use artificial neural network (ANN) systems to predict HHV using proximate and ultimate analysis data, but these efforts were hampered by varying case specific approaches and methodologies. Based on the complex ANN structures, a clear state of the art ANN understanding must be required for the prediction of biomass HHV. This study provides a comprehensive ANN application for HHV prediction in terms of how the activation functions, algorithms, hidden layers, dataset, and randomisation of the dataset affects the prediction of HHV of biomass feedstocks. In this paper we present a comparative qualitative and quantitative analysis of thirteen different algorithms, four different activation functions (logsig, tansig, poslin, purelin) with a wide range of hidden layer (3–15) for ANN models, used to predict the HHV of the biomass feedstocks. ANN models trained by the combination of ultimate-proximate analyses (UAPA) datasets provided more accurate predictions than the models trained by ultimate analysis or proximate analysis datasets. Regardless of the used datasets, sigmoidal activation functions (tansig and logsig) provide better prediction results than linear activation function (poslin and purelin). Furthermore, as training activation functions, “Levenberg-Marquardt (lm)” and “Bayesian Regularization (br)” algorithms provide the best HHV prediction. The best average correlation coefficients of 30 randomised run were observed with tansig as 0.962 and 0.876 for the ANN model developed by the UAPA dataset with a relatively high confidence levels of ∼96% for training and ∼92% for testing

Determining firing strengths through a novel similarity measure to enhance uncertainty handling in non-singleton fuzzy logic systems

Non-Singleton Fuzzy Logic Systems (NSFLSs) have the potential to tackle uncertainty within the design of fuzzy systems. The inference process has a major role in determining results, being partly based on the interaction of input and antecedent fuzzy sets (in generating firing levels). Recent studies have shown that the standard technique for determining firing strengths risks substantial information loss in terms of the interaction of the input and antecedents. To address this issue, alternative approaches, which employ the centroid of intersections (cen-NS) and similarity measures (sim-NS), have been developed. More recently, a novel similarity measure for fuzzy sets has been introduced, but as yet this has not been used for NSFLSs. This paper focuses on exploring the potential of this new similarity measure in combination with the sim-NS approach to generate a more suitable firing level for non-singleton input. Experiments are presented for fuzzy systems trained using both noisy and noise-free time series. The prediction results of NSFLSs for the novel similarity measure and the current approaches are compared. Analysis of the results shows that the novel similarity measure, used within the sim-NS approach, can be a more stable and suitable method suitable to be used in real world applications

Towards Better Performance in the Face of Input Uncertainty while Maintaining Interpretability in AI

Uncertainty is a pervasive element of many real-world applications and very often existing sources of uncertainty (e.g. atmospheric conditions, economic parameters or precision of measurement devices) have a detrimental impact on the input and ultimately results of decision-support systems. Thus, the ability to handle input uncertainty is a valuable component of real-world decision-support systems. There is a vast amount of literature on handling of uncertainty through decision-support systems. While they handle uncertainty and deliver a good performance, providing an insight into the decision process (e.g. why or how results are produced) is another important asset in terms of having trust in or providing a ‘debugging’ process in given decisions. Fuzzy set theory provides the basis for Fuzzy Logic Systems which are often associated with the ability for handling uncertainty and possessing mechanisms for providing a degree of interpretability. Specifically, Non-Singleton Fuzzy Logic Systems are essential in dealing with uncertainty that affects input which is one of the main sources of uncertainty in real-world systems. Therefore, in this thesis, we comprehensively explore enhancing non-singleton fuzzy logic systems capabilities considering both capturing-handling uncertainty and also maintaining interpretability. To that end the following three key aspects are investigated; (i) to faithfully map input uncertainty to outputs of systems, (ii) to propose a new framework to provide the ability for dynamically adapting system on-the-fly in changing real-world environments. (iii) to maintain level of interpretability while leveraging performance of systems. The first aspect is to leverage mapping uncertainty from input to outputs of systems through the interaction between input and antecedent fuzzy sets i.e. firing strengths. In the context of Non-Singleton Fuzzy Logic Systems, recent studies have shown that the standard technique for determining firing strengths risks information loss in terms of the interaction of the input uncertainty and antecedent fuzzy sets. This thesis explores and puts forward novel approaches to generating firing strengths which faithfully map the uncertainty affecting system inputs to outputs. Time-series forecasting experiments are used to evaluate the proposed alternative firing strength generating technique under different levels of input uncertainty. The analysis of the results shows that the proposed approach can also be a suitable method to generate appropriate firing levels which provide the ability to map different uncertainty levels from input to output of FLS that are likely to occur in real-world circumstances. The second aspect is to provide dynamic adaptive behaviours to systems at run-time in changing conditions which are common in real-world environments. Traditionally, in the fuzzification step of Non-Singleton Fuzzy Logic Systems, approaches are generally limited to the selection of a single type of input fuzzy sets to capture the input uncertainty, whereas input uncertainty levels tend to be inherently varying over time in the real-world at run-time. Thus, in this thesis, input uncertainty is modelled -where it specifically arises- in an online manner which can provide an adaptive behaviour to capture varying input uncertainty levels. The framework is presented to generate Type-1 or Interval Type-2 input fuzzy sets, called ADaptive Online Non-singleton fuzzy logic System (ADONiS). In the proposed framework, an uncertainty estimation technique is utilised on a sequence of observations to continuously update the input fuzzy sets of non-singleton fuzzy logic systems. Both the type-1 and interval type-2 versions of the ADONiS frameworks remove the limitation of the selection of a specific type of input fuzzy sets. Also this framework enables input fuzzy sets to be adapted to unknown uncertainty levels which is not perceived at the design stage of the model. Time-series forecasting experiments are implemented and results show that our proposed framework provides performance advantages over traditional counterpart approaches, particularly in environments that include high variation in noise levels, which are common in real-world applications. In addition, the real-world medical application study is designed to test the deployability of the ADONiS framework and to provide initial insight in respect to its viability in replacing traditional approaches. The third aspect is to maintain levels of interpretability, while increasing performance of systems. When a decision-support model delivers a good performance, providing an insight of the decision process is also an important asset in terms of trustworthiness, safety and ethical aspects etc. Fuzzy logic systems are considered to possess mechanisms which can provide a degree of interpretability. Traditionally, while optimisation procedures provide performance benefits in fuzzy logic systems, they often cause alterations in components (e.g. rule set, parameters, or fuzzy partitioning structures) which can lead to higher accuracy but commonly do not consider the interpretability of the resulting model. In this thesis, the state of the art in fuzzy logic systems interpretability is advanced by capturing input uncertainty in the fuzzification -where it arises- and by handling it the inference engine step. In doing so, while the performance increase is achieved, the proposed methods limit any optimisation impact to the fuzzification and inference engine steps which protects key components of FLSs (e.g. fuzzy sets, rule parameters etc.) and provide the ability to maintain the given level of interpretability

Noise parameter estimation for non-singleton fuzzy logic systems

Real-world environments face a wide range of noise (uncertainty) sources and gaining insight into the level of noise is a critical part of many applications. While Non-Singleton Fuzzy Logic Systems (NSFLSs), in particular recently introduced advanced variants such as centroid-based NSFLSs have the capacity to handle known quantities of uncertainty, thus far, the actual level of uncertainty has had to be defined a priori - i.e. prior to run time of a system or controller. This paper does not focus on such advances within the architecture of NSFLSs, but focuses on a novel two-stage approach for uncertainty handling in fuzzy logic systems which integrates: (i) estimation of noise levels and (ii) the appropriate handling of the noise based on this estimate, by means of a dynamically configured NSFLS. As initial evaluation of the approach, two chaotic nonlinear time series (Mackey-Glass and Lorenz), as well as a real-world Darwin sea level pressure series prediction fuzzy logic systems are implemented and compared to commonly used procedures. The results indicate that the proposed strategy of integrating uncertainty/noise estimation with the capacity of non-singleton fuzzy logic systems has the potential to deliver performance benefits in real-world applications without requiring a priori information on noise levels and thus delivers a first step towards smart, noise-adaptive non-singleton fuzzy logic systems and controllers