Soft computing techniques applied to finance

Soft computing is progressively gaining presence in the financial world. The number of real and potential applications is very large and, accordingly, so is the presence of applied research papers in the literature. The aim of this paper is both to present relevant application areas, and to serve as an introduction to the subject. This paper provides arguments that justify the growing interest in these techniques among the financial community and introduces domains of application such as stock and currency market prediction, trading, portfolio management, credit scoring or financial distress prediction areas.Publicad

Analysis of Ausubel auctions by means of evolutionary computation

IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation. Edimburgo, 2-5 September 2005The increasing use of auctions has led to a growing interest in the subject. A recent method used for carrying out examinations on auctions has been the design of computational simulations. The aim of this paper is to develop a genetic algorithm to find bidders' optimal strategies for a specific dynamic multi-unit auction. The algorithm provides the bidding strategy (defined as the action to be taken under different auction conditions) that maximizes the bidder's payoff. The algorithm is tested under several experimental environments, number of bidders and quantity of lots auctioned. The results suggest that the approach leads to strategies that outperform canonical strategies

Applied Computational Intelligence for finance and economics

This article introduces some relevant research works on computational intelligence applied to finance and economics. The objective is to offer an appropriate context and a starting point for those who are new to computational intelligence in finance and economics and to give an overview of the most recent works. A classification with five different main areas is presented. Those areas are related with different applications of the most modern computational intelligence techniques showing a new perspective for approaching finance and economics problems. Each research area is described with several works and applications. Finally, a review of the research works selected for this special issue is given.Publicad

Voltage regulation in distribution systems - Tap changer and Wind Power

Power quality is an important issue for the distribution network companies. They must guarantee the electricity supply fulfilling the requirements for the consumers. In this thesis we investigate specifically voltage requirements. We use transformers and tap changers to see how the voltage works in an electric system and we analyze the relationships with other aspects of the system’s performance, like power losses or tap changer operation. Lunds Energi wants to investigate any change that could improve the voltage quality. For that purpose, they provide us with real data of their systems, consisting of a city system and a countryside system with the characteristics of the lines, the transformers, the generation and the loads. Also, they supply the load profiles over one day which are made up of 24 values, one per hour. Using PowerWorld Simulator, first we build a generic system to run some simulations and extract conclusions that could be useful for the voltage problems in the real systems. Then, we build the city and countryside system and we run different cases, firstly focusing on identifying the problems experienced by Lunds Energi, and subsequently modifying the settings to look for potential improvements. Analyzing the simulation results we do not find a significant voltage problem in the city system, however, there is a low voltage problem at some costumers of the countryside system. Changing the settings of the transformer would improve the voltage quality and also the addition of a line drop compensation system would be positive. Globally, based on the results of the simulations, we confirm that there is a direct relation between the voltage set point and the losses and, also, between the deadband amplitude and the tap changer operation. In the case of the countryside system, Lunds Energi considers connecting wind turbines to the net. We simulate this case as well, in order to analyze the problem of too high voltage in some buses and we calculate the power we are allowed to generate without going out of the voltage limits. The conclusion is that this is a very interesting solution because we can inject enough power to feed all the loads and since the generation is close to the consumer we are reducing the power losses too. We propose some turbines those are currently in the market and are suitable for the system. For the future work, we suggest some modifications to study these systems. It could be more realistic to use load profiles with higher resolution to have a more realistic idea of the performance of the tap changer in the transformers. Also, it is more realistic to add the measurements of the voltage in the beginning of the system instead of assuming a constant value. The last suggestion is to work with other types of load models, than constant power since the relation between the voltage and the losses is then different

Kires: a data-centric telerehabilitation system based on kinect

185 p.It is widely accepted that the worldwide demand for rehabilitation services. To meet these needs, there will have to be developed systems of telerehabilitation that will bring services to even the most remote locations, through Internet and related technologies.This thesis is addressing the area of remote health care delivery, in particular telerehabilitation. We present KiReS; a Kinect based telerehabilitation system which covers the needs of physiotherapists in the process of designing, managing and evaluating physiotherapy protocols and sessions and also covers the needs of the users providing them an intuitive and encouraging interface and giving useful feedback to enhance the rehabilitation process. As required for multi-disciplinary projects, physiotherapists were consulted and feedback from patients was incorporated at different development stages.KiReS aims to outcome limitations of other telerehabilitation systems and bring some novel features: 1) A friendly and helpful interaction with the system using Kinect and motivational interfaces based on avatars. 2) Provision of smart data that supports physiotherapists in the therapy design process by: assuring the maintenance of appropriate constraints and selecting for them a set of exercises that are recommended for the user. 3) Monitoring of rehabilitation sessions through an algorithm that evaluates online performed exercises and sets if they have been properly executed. 4) Extensibility, KiReS is designed to be loaded with a broad spectrum of exercises and protocols

Effects of a rationing rule on the ausubel auction: a genetic algorithm implementation

The increasing use of auctions as a selling mechanism has led to a growing interest in the subject. Thus both auction theory and experimental examinations of these theories are being developed. A recent method used for carrying out examinations on auctions has been the design of computational simulations. The aim of this article is to develop a genetic algorithm to find automatically a bidder optimal strategy while the other players are always bidding sincerely. To this end a specific dynamic multiunit auction has been selected: the Ausubel auction, with private values, dropout information, and with several rationing rules implemented. The method provides the bidding strategy (defined as the action to be taken under different auction conditions) that maximizes the bidder's payoff. The algorithm is tested under several experimental environments that differ in the elasticity of their demand curves, number of bidders and quantity of lots auctioned. The results suggest that the approach leads to strategies that outperform sincere bidding when rationing is needed.Publicad

Early bankruptcy prediction using ENPC

Bankruptcy prediction has long time been an active research field in finance. One of the main approaches to this issue is dealing with it as a classification problem. Among the range of instruments available, we focus our attention on the Evolutionary Nearest Neighbor Classifier (ENPC). In this work we assess the performance of the ENPC comparing it to six alternatives. The results suggest that this algorithm might be considered a good choice.Publicad

Paraíso particular

Sexto accésit del Certame

Makers against Covid-19: Face shields as the international solidarity KPI

At the first signs of the Covid-19 pandemic, the uncertainty around the global stock of medical supplies sparked a response in the DIY communities around the world. In the case of Spain, a community called Coronavirus Makers (CVM) emerged to supply ventilators and personal protection equipment (PPE) to hospitals and people in need. This paper explores the evolution of this community-driven development, detailing the patterns proposed by members of the group acting as design experts to tackle different problems. More specifically the paper uses face shields, the most produced PPE in Spain, as a boundary object to highlight the relationships amongst individuals, institutions, and companies. The objects of design, since they fall in the specific category of devices for medical use, have to overcome validation at the technical level. Authors will also explore some of the controversies surrounding the transfer of these products from horizontal innovation networks to traditional production companies