Fuzzy Rule-based Classification Research Articles

Application of the Sugeno integral in Fuzzy Rule-Based Classification

Fuzzy Rule-Based Classification System (FRBCS) is a well-known technique to deal with classification problems. Recent studies have considered the usage of the Choquet integral and its generalizations (e.g.: CT-integral, CF-Integral and CC-integral) to enhance the performance of such systems. Such fuzzy integrals were applied to the Fuzzy Reasoning Method (FRM) to aggregate the fired fuzzy rules when classifying new data. However, the Sugeno integral, another well-known aggregation operator, obtained good results in other applications, such as brain–computer interfaces. These facts led to the present study, in which we consider the Sugeno integral in classification problems. That is, the Sugeno integral is applied in the FRM of a widely used FRBCS, and its performance is analyzed over 33 different datasets from the literature, also considering different fuzzy measures. To show the efficiency of this new approach, the results obtained are also compared with previous studies that involved the application of different aggregation functions. Finally, we perform a statistical analysis of the application.

Employing Iterative Feature Selection in Fuzzy Rule-Based Binary Classification

Employing Iterative Feature Selection in Fuzzy Rule-Based Binary Classification

A Design of Fuzzy Rule-Based Classifier for Multiclass Classification and Its Realization in Horizontal Federated Learning

A Design of Fuzzy Rule-Based Classifier for Multiclass Classification and Its Realization in Horizontal Federated Learning

Energy Consumption Prediction in Residential Buildings—An Accurate and Interpretable Machine Learning Approach Combining Fuzzy Systems with Evolutionary Optimization

This paper addresses the problem of accurate and interpretable prediction of energy consumption in residential buildings. The solution that we propose in this work employs the knowledge discovery machine learning approach combining fuzzy systems with evolutionary optimization. The contribution of this work is twofold, including both methodology and experimental investigations. As far as methodological contribution is concerned, in this paper, we present an original designing procedure of fuzzy rule-based prediction systems (FRBPSs) for accurate and transparent energy consumption prediction in residential buildings. The proposed FRBPSs are characterized by a genetically optimized accuracy–interpretability trade-off. The trade-off optimization is carried out by means of multi-objective evolutionary optimization algorithms—in particular, by our generalization of the well-known strength Pareto evolutionary algorithm 2 (SPEA2). The proposed FRBPSs’ designing procedure is our original extension and generalization (for regression problems operating on continuous outputs) of an approach to designing fuzzy rule-based classifiers (FRBCs) we developed earlier and published in 2020 in this journal. FRBCs operate on discrete outputs, i.e., class labels. The experimental contribution of this work includes designing the collection of FRBPSs for residential building energy consumption prediction using the data set published in 2024 and available from Kaggle Database Repository. Moreover, the comparison with 20 available alternative approaches is carried out, demonstrating that our approach significantly outperforms alternative methods in terms of interpretability and transparency of the energy consumption predictions made while remaining comparable or slightly superior in terms of the accuracy of those predictions.

Fuzzy rule based classifier model for evidence based clinical decision support systems

Clinicians benefit from the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques applied to health data within health records, which identify commonalities between them. It enables them to get evidence-based support in recommending shared treatment paths for undiagnosed health records. The collective inference from these patterns, drawn from an array of health records, further enhances the capacity to mine essential features, supporting public health experts in their management of population health conditions. This paper presents a novel mapping tool model designed to analyze electronic health records and provide healthcare providers with evidence-based decision support. The work focuses on the analysis of health records from hospital databases, encompassing parameters extracted from routine health checkups. By scrutinizing patterns within examined health records, healthcare providers can seamlessly align with newer health records for diagnosis and treatment recommendations. Core to this approach is the integration of a fuzzy rule-based classifier system within the proposed system. This incorporation facilitates the processing of health records, extracting pertinent features to augment decision-making with the support of knowledge bases. The model architecture provides flexibility and customizability, enabling easy configuration of the system to accurately map new health records to the examined dataset. Additionally, the model utilizes a specially developed distance-measure technique tailored for the proposed fuzzy-based system. Results showcase satisfying performance and robust discriminant capability for accurate recommendations. The alignment of outcomes with expert evaluations underscores the model's efficacy and attainment of benchmarks.

Construction of fuzzy classification systems by fitness sharing based genetic search and boosting based ensemble

This paper concentrates on the development of precise fuzzy rule-based classification systems for high-dimensional and multi-class problems. The approach begins with the extraction on potential fuzzy if-then rules using fitness sharing based genetic algorithms, this ensures effective searching for productive niches, thereby evolving and maintaining a diverse, cooperative population. Subsequently, for the purpose of combining the obtained fuzzy rules and eliminating their conflicts, an adaboost ensemble method is utilized, enhancing the accuracy of the fuzzy classification systems.Experiments have been conducted on 10 UCI datasets and 3 well-known image classification problems. The features for these image tasks were derived from the activation values of the final convolutional layer in pre-trained convolutional neural networks. These datasets, which were chosen to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, exhibit significant variation in terms of dimensionality and the number of class labels. Comparative analyses are carried out with conventional fuzzy rule-based classification methods, and the results demonstrate that the classification systems can be developed for complex problems, while maintaining a high-level of prediction accuracy.

A design of fuzzy rule-based classifier optimized through softmax function and information entropy

Takagi–Sugeno–Kang (TSK) classifiers have achieved great success in many applications due to their interpretability and transparent model reliability for users. At present, however, how to evaluate classification results is still an unsolved issue for TSK classifiers. This study designs a fuzzy rule-based classifier based on TSK classifiers, the outputs of which for an instance can be considered as the membership grades that the instance belongs to all classes. Then, an information entropy-based method is proposed to estimate the certainty of the outputs, which facilitates the further evaluation of the classification results of the instance for users. If the confidence level is not high, users can reject the classification results, and use other more advanced classifiers or collect more information about the instance. Moreover, the developed mechanism is suitable for handling large data since the adaptive moment estimation algorithm is used to identify the parameters of it. Experimental results demonstrate that the developed mechanism outperforms several rule-based classifiers.

Fuzzy rule-based classification of complex biogas energy projects

The work is devoted to the problems analyzing the effectiveness of projects in the field of biogas energy. The purpose of the work is to build an intellectual toolkit for classifying innovative bioenergy projects. To form a variety of classification characteristics, it is proposed to use the Ishikawa cause-and-effect diagram, which makes it possible to systematize the factors influencing the features of the project. The specifics of biogas technologies, associated with the possibility of generating not only electrical but thermal energy, as well as waste disposal and the production of organic fertilizers, are taken into account by introducing an additional group of factors reflecting the need for these types of products. Expert technologies for assessing factors led to the use of the methodology of fuzzy analysis. The constructed classification procedure is based on a system of fuzzy production rules that reflect the cause-and-effect relationships of the subject area.The developed tools make it possible to reduce the labor intensity of comparative analysis of the effectiveness of the implementation of innovative bioenergy projects by identifying the class of compared projects.

On the Suitability of Fuzzy Rule-Based Classification Systems with Noisy Data

On the Suitability of Fuzzy Rule-Based Classification Systems with Noisy Data

A fuzzy rule-based system for terrain classification in highway design

ABSTRACT The choice of an incorrect terrain classification might lead to consequences in construction costs, design speed, or even safety. However, the current design criteria for terrain classification may be highly subjective. In Brazil, design guidelines use textual descriptors for three classes, namely level, rolling, and mountainous. This study proposes a fuzzy rule-based classifier to predict terrain classes based on average slope and slope variation. The classifier uses fuzzy logic, which can account for imprecise and vague definitions of the input variables. The classifier was built using topographic variables, i.e. slope variation and average slope, and experts’ knowledge. A survey was considered to extract experts’ opinions regarding different terrain classes. The classifier provided an accuracy of at least 75%, which suggests that the expert system captured the experts’ perceptions of the highway classes. As a result, the proposed system can assist decision-making by providing a more consistent method for terrain classification.

Learning positive-negative rule-based fuzzy associative classifiers with a good trade-off between complexity and accuracy

Nowadays, the call for transparency in Artificial Intelligence models is growing due to the need to understand how decisions derived from the methods are made when they ultimately affect human life and health. Fuzzy Rule-Based Classification Systems have been used successfully as they are models that are easily understood by models themselves. However, complex search spaces hinder the learning process, and in most cases, lead to problems of complexity (coverage and specificity). This problem directly affects the intention to use them to enable the user to analyze and understand the model. Because of this, we propose a fuzzy associative classification method to learn classifiers with an improved trade-off between accuracy and complexity. This method learns the most appropriate granularity of each variable to generate a set of simple fuzzy association rules with a reduced number of associations that consider positive and negative dependencies to be able to classify an instance depending on the presence or absence of certain items. The proposal also chooses the most interesting rules based on several interesting measures and finally performs a genetic rule selection and adjustment to reach the most suitable context of the selected rule set. The quality of our proposal has been analyzed using 23 real-world datasets, comparing them with other proposals by applying statistical analysis. Moreover, the study carried out on a real biomedical research problem of childhood obesity shows the improved trade-off between the accuracy and complexity of the models generated by our proposal.

Z-number-valued rule-based classification system

The fuzzy rule-based classification system (FRBCS) is a popular tool for classification problems due to its interpretability and comprehensibility. As an extension of fuzzy numbers, the concept of Z-number is a more appropriate formal structure to describe uncertain and partially reliable information. A Z-number is an ordered pair of fuzzy numbers, where the second fuzzy number describes the reliability of the first one. As a result of its representation capability, it can receive better classification results. However, there is still a gap in the application of Z-numbers to classification problems due to their high computation complexity. To take advantage of the Z-number, we design a simple way to make Z-numbers apply to classification problems. Use the second fuzzy number to adjust the first fuzzy number to fit the training data. Then we create a kind of Z-number-valued if–then rule by extending the fuzzy if–then rule. In addition, a Z-number-valued rule-based classification system (ZRBCS) is developed, including two main processes: rule generation and new pattern classification. The developed system can cover more information than the classic fuzzy rule-based system, which can improve classification effects. The proposed ZRBCS is compared with classical FRBCS with/without certain degrees and three classical classification algorithms. According to statistical tests, ZRBCS is superior to FRBCS and two other algorithms.

Comparative Study of Fuzzy Rule-Based Classifiers for Medical Applications.

The use of machine learning in medical decision support systems can improve diagnostic accuracy and objectivity for clinical experts. In this study, we conducted a comparison of 16 different fuzzy rule-based algorithms applied to 12 medical datasets and real-world data. The results of this comparison showed that the best performing algorithms in terms of average results of Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC), area under the curve (AUC), and accuracy (ACC) was a classifier based on fuzzy logic and gene expression programming (GPR), repeated incremental pruning to produce error reduction (Ripper), and ordered incremental genetic algorithm (OIGA), respectively. We also analyzed the number and size of the rules generated by each algorithm and provided examples to objectively evaluate the utility of each algorithm in clinical decision support. The shortest and most interpretable rules were generated by 1R, GPR, and C45Rules-C. Our research suggests that GPR is capable of generating concise and interpretable rules while maintaining good classification performance, and it may be a valuable algorithm for generating rules from medical data.

Intrusion Detection in Internet of Things With MQTT Protocol—An Accurate and Interpretable Genetic-Fuzzy Rule-Based Solution

This article addresses the problem of an accurate and interpretable intrusion detection in Internet of Things (IoT) systems using the knowledge-discovery data-mining/machine-learning approach proposed by us. This approach—implemented as a fuzzy rule-based classifier—employs our generalization of the well-known multiobjective evolutionary optimization algorithm to optimize the accuracy-interpretability tradeoff of the IoT intrusion detection systems (IoT IDSs). The main contribution of this work is the design of accurate and interpretable IoT IDSs from the most recently published data—referred to as MQTT-IOT-IDS2020 data sets—describing the behavior of an MQTT-protocol-based IoT system. A comparison with seven available alternative approaches was also performed demonstrating that the approach proposed by us significantly outperforms alternative methods in terms of interpretability of intrusion-detection decisions made while remaining competitive or superior in terms of the accuracy of those decisions.

An empirical study on how humans appreciate automated counterfactual explanations which embrace imprecise information

The explanatory capacity of interpretable fuzzy rule-based classifiers is usually limited to offering explanations for the predicted class only. A lack of potentially useful explanations for non-predicted alternatives can be overcome by designing methods for the so-called counterfactual reasoning. Nevertheless, state-of-the-art methods for counterfactual explanation generation require special attention to human evaluation aspects, as the final decision upon the classification under consideration is left for the end user. In this paper, we first introduce novel methods for qualitative and quantitative counterfactual explanation generation. Then, we carry out a comparative analysis of qualitative explanation generation methods operating on (combinations of) linguistic terms as well as a quantitative method suggesting precise changes in feature values. Then, we propose a new metric for assessing the perceived complexity of the generated explanations. Further, we design and carry out two human evaluation experiments to assess the explanatory power of the aforementioned methods. As a major result, we show that the estimated explanation complexity correlates well with the informativeness, relevance, and readability of explanations perceived by the targeted study participants. This fact opens the door to using the new automatic complexity metric for guiding multi-objective evolutionary explainable fuzzy modeling in the near future.

Artificial Intelligence Based Customer Churn Prediction Model for Business Markets.

The introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies in recent years has resulted in improved company performance. Customer churn forecast is a difficult problem in many corporate sectors, particularly the telecommunications industry. Because customer churns have a direct impact on a company's total revenue, telecommunications firms have begun to develop 76 models to reduce churns at an earlier stage. Previous research has revealed that AI and ML models are effective CCP solutions. According to this viewpoint, this study proposes a unique AI-based CCP model for Telecommunication Business Markets (AICCP-TBM). The AICCP-TBM model's purpose is to control the existence of churners and non-churners in the telecom sector. The proposed AICCP-TBM model employs a Chaotic Salp Swarm Optimization-based Feature Selection (CSSO-FS) method for the best feature assortment. In addition, a Fuzzy Rule-based Classifier(FRC) is used to distinguish between client churners and non-churners. A technique known as Quantum Behaved Particle Swarm Optimization (QPSO) is used to pick the membership functions for the FRC model in order to improve the classification performance of the FRC model. The performance of the AICCP-TBM model is validated using a benchmark CCP dataset and the experimental results are reviewed from several angles. In relations of presentation, the imitation consequences demonstrated that the AICCP-TBM model surpassed the most recent state-of-the-art CPP models. The suggested AICCP-TBM method's comparative accuracy was thoroughly tested on the three datasets used. Using datasets 1-3, this technique obtained better levels of accuracy, with the maximum attainable values being 97.25 %, 97.5 % and 94.33 %. The simulation results for the AICCP-TBM model demonstrated improved prediction performance.

An incremental type-2 fuzzy classifier for stock trend prediction

Due to its complex and unstable nature, stock market prediction is one of the most challenging problems. Lots of research has tried to explore the possibility of predicting stock trends using numerous machine learning methods. However, little effort has been made to predict the future trend online. In this paper, we propose an incremental type-2 fuzzy rule-base classifier capable of considering a high amount of uncertainty in stock data in addition to self-adaptation in an online manner. In this approach, interval type-2 fuzzy sets are built by combining type-1 sets that are directly extracted from the data. The proposed classifier can dynamically modify its parameters in order to react to the alteration of concepts without re-training the model. The efficiency of the proposed method is tested on some market indexes such as SP500, TAIEX, etc. and compared to various incremental methods. Moreover, to show the effectiveness of the proposed technique even in offline mode, we have compared it against some outstanding offline approaches, including deep neural networks. The obtained results demonstrate that our proposed method performs well under different settings.

Dynamic Incremental Ensemble Fuzzy Classifier for Data Streams in Green Internet of Things

Due to the fast, dynamic, and continuous arrival of data streams in the green Internet of Things (IoT) environment, the probability distribution of data streams changes over time. In real IoT scenarios such as unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) detection and smart light switch control, data distribution changes have reduced the trained model’s accuracy for data streams problems classification, making it challenging to detect UAV intruders and predict whether energy-saving lamps in smart buildings are on or off. In this paper, an incremental ensemble classification method is proposed to improve prediction accuracy for green IoT. Specifically, a fuzzy rule-based classifier is combined with a dynamic weighting algorithm for improving classification accuracy. Moreover, the model is updated by incrementally learning the characteristics of data streams, which can effectively handle concept drift caused by data distribution changes in data streams. Experimental evaluations of UAV intrusion detection, smart buildings, and other datasets show that the proposed approach yields 2% higher area under the curve (AUC) and geometric mean (G-mean) than existing methods on UAV Detection and Occupancy datasets and 5% higher AUC and G-mean on five benchmarking datasets. For all datasets, the proposed approach yields 50% faster average training time than other methods.

Fuzzy Rule-Based Classification Method for Incremental Rule Learning

Granularrules have been extensively used for classification in fuzzy datasets to promote the advancement of artificial intelligence. However, due to the diversity of data types, how to improve the readability of the extracted granular rules while ensuring efficiency is always a challenge. Since granular reduct in granular computing (GrC) can simplify real complex problem and dataset, this article carries out granular rule learning from the perspective of granular reduct by taking formal concept analysis (FCA)-based GrC method as a framework. Specifically, for achieving classification task, we first propose a method to update the granular reduct, and then explore the updating mechanism of fuzzy granular rule in a reduced dataset. Second, a novel fuzzy rule-based classification model named FRCM is presented for fuzzy granular rule learning. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed model, some numerical experiments for incremental learning and fuzzy rule mining are conducted to demonstrate that FRCM can achieve the state-of-the-art classification performance.

Deep Fuzzy Rule-Based Classification System With Improved Wang–Mendel Method

Wang–Mendel (WM) fuzzy system is an effective and interpretable model for solving tabular data classification problem. However, original WM fuzzy system is weak in handling dataset with high dimensionality or large volume. Meanwhile, its capability of characterizing data is narrow, which results from lacking hierarchical transformation of features like deep learning-based models. In this article, we propose a deep fuzzy rule-based classification system (DFRBCS) based on improved WM method, in which fuzzy technique and deep learning strategy are combined to make a desirable tradeoff between model’s interpretability and prediction accuracy. We first redefine the consequent part of fuzzy rule in WM fuzzy system with class probability vector, which endows the improved WM fuzzy system with capacity for serving as building block of deep model. The model structure of DFRBCS is designed in layer-by-layer manner, where raw features can be transformed hierarchically. For every layer in DFRBCS, it contains many improved WM fuzzy systems whose input spaces are generated by shuffling and sliding window operation on concatenated outputs of fuzzy systems in previous layer. Comparative experiments are conducted on 45 real-world datasets with various sizes and dimensionality between our method, five baseline models, and the other deep fuzzy classifiers (D-TSK-FC, HID-TSK-FC, FCCI-TSK, DSA-FC, and MEEFIS). The experimental results show that DFRBCS is competitive in classification performance and promising in model’s interpretability.