• Computers and Concrete
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.281-303
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• 2009

The lack of safety of bridge deck structures causes frequent repair and strengthening of such structures. The repair induces great loss of economy, not only due to direct cost by repair, but also due to stopping the public use of such structures during repair. The major reason for this frequent repair is mainly due to the lack of realistic and accurate assessment system for the bridge decks. The purpose of the present research was to develop a realistic expert system, called Bridge Slab-Expert which can evaluate reasonably the condition as well as the service life of concrete bridge decks, based on the deterioration models that are derived from both the structural and environmental effects. The diagnosis assessment of deck slabs due to structural and environmental effects are developed based on the cracking in concrete, surface distress and structural distress. Fuzzy logic is utilized to handle uncertainties and imprecision involved. Finally, Bridge Slab-Expert is developed for prediction of safety and remaining service life based on the chloride ions penetration and fick's second law. Proposed expert system is based on user-friendly GUI environment. The developed expert system will allow the correct diagnosis of concrete decks, realistic prediction of service life, the determination of confidence level, the description of condition and the proposed action for repair.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.54-69
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• 2012

Chan and Qi (SCM 8/3 (2003) 209) developed an innovative measurement method that aggregates performance measures in a supply chain into an overall performance index. The method is useful and makes a significant contribution to supply chain management. Nevertheless, it can be cumbersome in computation due to its highly complex algorithmic fuzzy model. In aggregating the performance information, weights used by Chan and Qi-which aim to address the imprecision of human judgments-are incompatible with weights in additive models. Furthermore, the default assumption of linearity of its scoring procedure could lead to an inaccurate assessment of the overall performance. This paper addresses these limitations by developing an alternative measurement that takes care of the above. This research integrates three different approaches to multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA)-the multiattribute value theory (MAVT), the swing weighting method and the eigenvector procedure-to develop a comprehensive assessment of supply chain performance. One case study is presented to demonstrate the measurement of the proposed method. The performance model used in the case study relies on the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model level 1. With this measurement method, supply chain managers can easily benchmark the performance of the whole system, and then analyze the effectiveness and efficiency of the supply chain.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.595-612
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• 2011

Most organizations use performance appraisal system to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of their employees. In evaluating staff performance, performance appraisal usually involves awarding numerical values or linguistic labels to employees performance. These values and labels are used to represent each staff achievement by reasoning incorporated in the arithmetical or statistical methods. However, the staff performance appraisal may involve judgments which are based on imprecise data especially when a person (the superior) tries to interpret another person's (his/her subordinate) performance. Thus, the scores awarded by the appraiser are only approximations. From fuzzy logic perspective, the performance of the appraisee involves the measurement of his/her ability, competence and skills, which are actually fuzzy concepts that can be captured in fuzzy terms. Accordingly, fuzzy approach can be used to handle these imprecision and uncertainty information. Therefore, the performance appraisal system can be examined using Fuzzy Logic Approach, which is carried out in the study. The study utilized a Cascaded fuzzy inference system to generate the performance qualities of some University non-teaching staff that are based on specific performance appraisal criteria.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 1994

This paper presents an intelligent robotic control method for chamferless parts mating by integrating fuzzy control and neural network. The successful assembly task requires an extremely high position accuracy and a good knowledge of mating parts. However, conventional assembly method alone makes it difficult to achieve satisfactory assembly performance because of the complexity and the uncertainties of the process and its environments such as not only the limitation of the devices performing the assembly but also imperfect knowledge of the parts being assembled. To cope with these problems, an intelligent robotic assembly method is proposed, which is composed of fuzzy controller and learning mechanism based upon neural net. In this method, fuzzy controller copes with the complexity and the uncertainties of the assembly process, while neural network enhances the assembly scheme so as to learn fuzzy rules from experience and adapt to changes in environment of uncertainty and imprecision. The performance of the proposed assembly scheme is evaluted through a series of experiments using SCARA robot. The results show that the proposed control method can be effectively applied to chamferless precision parts mating.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.10
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• pp.3298-3313
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• 2021

The objective of this study is to estimate the occurrence probabilities of severe accident phenomena based on a fuzzy elicitation technique. Normally, it is difficult to determine these probabilities due to the lack of information on severe accident progression and the highly uncertain values currently in use. In this case, fuzzy set theory (FST) can be best exploited. First, questions were devised for expert elicitation on technical issues of severe accident phenomena. To deal with ambiguities and the imprecision of previously developed (reference) probabilities, fuzzy aggregation methods based on FST were employed to derive the occurrence probabilities of severe accidents via four phases: 1) choosing experts, 2) quantifying weighting factors for the experts, 3) aggregating the experts' opinions, and 4) defuzzifying the fuzzy numbers. In this way, this study obtained expert elicitation results in the form of updated occurrence probabilities of severe accident phenomena in the OPR-1000 plant, after which the differences between the reference probabilities and the newly acquired probabilities using fuzzy aggregation were compared, with the advantages of the fuzzy technique over other approaches explained. Lastly, the impact of applying the updated severe accident probabilities on containment integrity was quantitatively investigated in a Level 2 PSA model.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.243-252
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• 2018

In a satellite gravimetry mission similar to GRACE, the precision of inter-satellite ranging is one of the key factors affecting the quality of gravity field recovery. In this paper, the impact of ranging precision on the accuracy of recovered geopotential coefficients is analyzed. Simulated precise orbit determination (POD) data and inter-satellite range data of formation-flying satellites containing white noise were generated, and geopotential coefficients were recovered from these simulated data sets using the crude acceleration approach. The accuracy of the recovered coefficients was quantitatively compared between data sets encompassing different ranging precisions. From this analysis, a rough prediction of the accuracy of geopotential coefficients could be obtained from the hypothetical mission. For a given POD precision, a ranging measurement precision that matches the POD precision was determined. Since the purpose of adopting inter-satellite ranging in a gravimetry mission is to overcome the imprecision of determining orbits, ranging measurements should be more precise than POD. For that reason, it can be concluded that this critical ranging precision matching the POD precision can serve as the minimum precision requirement for an on-board ranging device. Although the result obtained herein is about a very particular case, this methodology can also be applied in cases where different parameters are used.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.79-86
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• 2021

Alzheimer's is a chronic progressive disease which exhibits varied symptoms and behavioural traits from person to person. The deterioration in cognitive abilities is more noticeable through their Activities and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living rather than biological markers. This information discussed in social media communities was collected and features were extracted by using the proposed fuzzy logic based algorithm to address the uncertainties and imprecision in the data reported. The data thus obtained is used to train machine learning models in order to predict the longevity of the patients. Models built on features extracted using the proposed algorithm performs better than models trained on full set of features. Important findings are discussed and Support Vector Regressor with RBF kernel is identified as the best performing model in predicting the longevity of Alzheimer's patients. The results would prove to be of high value for healthcare practitioners and palliative care providers to design interventions that can alleviate the trauma faced by patients and caregivers due to chronic diseases.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.31 no.1_2
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• pp.59-66
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• 2004

In this paper, a fast 3D model extraction algorithm with an enhanced PBIL of preserving depth consistency is proposed for the extraction of 3D depth information from 2D images. Evolutionary computation algorithms are efficient search methods based on natural selection and population genetics. 2D disparity maps acquired by conventional matching algorithms do not match well with the original image profile in disparity edge regions because of the loss of fine and precise information in the regions. Therefore, in order to decrease the imprecision of disparity values and increase the quality of matching, a compact genetic algorithm is adapted for matching environments, and the adaptive window, which is controlled by the complexity of neighbor disparities in an abrupt disparity point is used. As the result, the proposed algorithm showed more correct and precise disparities were obtained than those by conventional matching methods with relaxation scheme.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.631-637
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• 2010

The aim of affective engineering is to develop a new product by translating customer affections into design factors. Affective data have so far been analyzed using a multivariate statistical analysis, but the affective data do not always have linear features assumed under normal distribution. Rough sets model is an effective method for knowledge discovery under uncertainty, imprecision and fuzziness. Rough sets model is to deal with any type of data regardless of their linearity characteristics. Therefore, this study utilizes rough sets model to extract affective knowledge from affective data. Four types of scent alternatives and four types of sounds were designed and the experiment was performed to look into affective differences in subject's preference on air conditioner. Finally, the purpose of this study also is to extract knowledge from affective data using rough sets model and to figure out the relationships between rough sets based affective engineering method and statistical one. The result of a case study shows that the proposed approach can effectively extract affective knowledge from affective data and is able to discover the relationships between customer affections and design factors. This study also shows similar results between rough sets model and statistical method, but it can be made more valuable by comparing fuzzy theory, neural network and multivariate statistical methods.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.14
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• pp.5755-5762
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• 2015

Background: Short-course preoperative radiation (SCRT) with delayed surgery was found to increase pathologic complete response (pCR) rates in several trials. However, there was no clear answer on whether SCRT or long-course chemo-radiotherapy (LCRT) is more effective. Therefore we conducted this meta-analysis to evaluate the safety and efficacy of SCRT versus LCRT, both with delayed surgery, for treatment of rectal cancer. Materials and Methods: The literature was searched from PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and clinicaltrials.gov up to November, 2014. Quality of the randomized controlled trials (RCTs) was evaluated according to the Cochrane's risk of bias tool of RCT. The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) system was used to rate the level of evidence. Review Manager 5.3 was employed for statistical analysis. Pooled risk ratios (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated. Results: Three RCTs, with a total of 357 rectal cancer patients, were included in this systematic review. Metaanalysis results demonstrated there were no significantly differences in sphincter preservation rate, local recurrence rate, grade 3~4 acute toxicity, R0 resection rate and downstaging rate. Compared with SCRT, LCRT was associated with significant increase in the pCR rate [RR=0.49, 95%CI (0.31, 0.78), P=0.003]. Conclusions: In terms of sphincter preservation rate, local recurrence rate, grade 3~4 acute toxicity, R0 resection rate and downstaging rate, SCRT with delayed surgery is as effective as LCRT with delayed surgery for management of rectal cancer. LCRT significantly increased pCR rate compared with SCRT. Due to risk of bias and imprecision, further multi-center large sample RCTs were needed to confirm this conclusion.