Bücher veröffentlicht von Physica-Verlag HD

This volume contains the proceedings of the international conference "e;Complexity and Industrial Clusters: Dynamics and Models in Theory and Practice"e;, organized by Fondazione Comunita e Innovazione and held in Milan on June 19 and 20, 2001 under the aegis of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (founded in Rome in 1604), one of the oldest and most famous national academies of science in the world. Fondazione Comunita e Innovazione encourages research and the dissemination of knowledge about social, economic, cultural and civil issues. It promotes research and innovation related to local production systems and industrial districts, with special reference to: the interactions between large companies and SMEs (small and medium-size enterprises), the effects of industrial districts on the development and welfare of their communities and of neighbouring areas, the effects of globalisation on these local systems of productions. Fondazione Comunita e Innovazione was created in Milan in 1999. It supports studies, publications, and events, both on its own and in cooperation with corporations, research institutes, foundations, associations and universities. It also grants scientific sponsorship to research that is in line with its mission, as set forth in its by-laws. The founding member of the Fondazione is Edison (formerly Monted:son). The other subscribing members, in historical order, are: Ausimont, Tecnimont, Eridania, Accenture, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

This book is intended to be an undergraduate introduction to the theory of fuzzy sets. We envision, sometime in the future, a curriculum in fuzzy sys­ tems theory, which could be in computer /information sciences, mathematics, engineering or economics (business, finance), with this book as the starting point. It is not a book for researchers but a book for beginners where you learn the basics. This course would be analogous to a pre-calculus course where a student studies algebra, functions and trigonometry in preparation for more advanced courses. Chapters 3 through 11 are on fuzzy algebra, fuzzy functions, fuzzy trigonometry, fuzzy geometry, and solving fuzzy equations. However, after this course the student doesn't go on to calculus but to more specialized courses in fuzzy systems theory like fuzzy clustering, fuzzy pattern recogni­ tion, fuzzy database, fuzzy image processing and computer vision, robotics, intelligent agents, soft computing, fuzzy rule based systems (control, expert systems), fuzzy decision making, applications to operations research, fuzzy mathematics, fuzzy systems modeling, etc. Therefore, very little of most of these topics are included in this book. There are many new topics included in this book. Let us point out some of them here: (1) mixed fuzzy logic (Section 3.5); (2) three methods of solving fuzzy equation/problems (Chapter 5); (3) solving fuzzy inequalities (Chapter 6); (4) inverse fuzzy functions (Section 8.5); (5) fuzzy plane geometry (Chap­ ter 9); (6) fuzzy trigonometry (Chapter 10); and (7) fuzzy optimization based on genetic algorithms (Chapter 16).