CALL FOR CHAPTERS

Granular Computing and Decision-Making: Interactive and Iterative Approaches 

To be published by Springer Verlag 

Witold Pedrycz and Shyi-Ming Chen (editors)

Fuzzy decision-making – including its underlying methodologies, algorithmic developments and a rich and highly diversified slew of application studies form a cornerstone of fuzzy sets. In spite of the ongoing research, there are still a number of open and timely issues worth further investigations. In particular, there is a genuine need to come to the grip with regard to the dominant aspects of the technology and its systematic and coherent usage.

The overarching theme of the proposed edited volume dwells upon the two key features of decision making processes that become quite commonly present throughout numerous studies and applications, and deal with Interactive and Iterative processes of decision making. Decision-making is inherently interactive. Fuzzy sets help realize human-machine communication in an efficient manner by facilitating a two-way interaction in a friendly, user-centric way. This interaction is carried out at a suitable level of information granularity not confining and restricting the user to the use of precise numeric data. Subsequently any decision support system releases non-numeric findings, which become helpful to comprehend the results and assess potential impact of decisions being made. Human-centric interaction is of paramount relevance as a leading guiding design principle of decision support systems. The facet of interaction comes hand in hand with iterative processes of decision-making. Resulting recommendations issued by the system can be assessed and may trigger an iterative scheme of gathering additional evidence, refining goals and constraints, assessing the findings and if necessary proceeding with the next iterative loop. For instance, an iterative nature of decision-making becomes apparent in consensus building where a series of iterations among the participants is commonly observed.

The facets of interactivity and the iterative way decisions are formed give rise to the title of this volume – I² Fuzzy Decision Making processes. We are of opinion that even though these aspects of the decision processes are quite often commonly encountered, they are not fully and systematically exploited, being made aware of and comprehensively supported by the technology of fuzzy sets. The objective of this volume is to revisit the paradigm and practice of fuzzy decision-making being cast in this setting.

Given the theme of this project, this book is aimed at a broad audience of researchers and practitioners. It is addressed to well-established communities including those active in various disciplines where decision-making, analysis and optimization play a pivotal role. Those involved in risk analysis, data analysis, management, various branches of engineering, and economics will also benefit from the exposure to the subject matter.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Mechanisms of interaction in decision-making
• Consensus building
• Iterative optimization methods in decision making
• Role of information granules and Granular Computing in decision models
• Linguistic models of decision processes
• Studies in visualization and interpretation schemes for decision-making
• Collaboration schemes in decision-making
• Case studies – coverage of a suite of representative areas of applications. Comparative analysis
• Consensus models for fuzzy group decision making
• Consistency measures for fuzzy group decision making

Submission Procedure

Potential authors are invited to submit a brief one-page summary of the proposed chapter clearly identifying the main objectives of their research. Authors of the accepted proposals will be notified and provided with detailed guidelines. Brief Proposals of Chapters are to be submitted by June 10, 2014. Full chapters are to be submitted by September 1, 2014. All manuscripts will be thoroughly reviewed. The lead authors will be provided with a complimentary copy of the volume.

The proposals and manuscripts are to be submitted electronically to both editors (wpedrycz@ualberta.ca and smchen@mail.ntust.edu.tw).

Important Dates

Brief Proposal Submission          June 10, 2014

Notification of Acceptance         June 30, 2014

Full Chapter Submission        September 1, 2014

Review Results Returned     November 15, 2014

Final Chapter Submission     December 15, 2014