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The objective of this project is twofold. Firstly, researchers wants to identify between multiple financial and shipping related measures, the features that have statistically significant impact on the estimation of the spot voyage time charter price of P1A Panamax shipping route which is daily issued from the London-based Baltic Exchange. Secondly, significant objective of this thesis is to examine the predictive ability of multiple multivariant feature models (based on the results of the first objective) and of single variable time series models answering to the question “What is the estimated voyage time charter price of P1A shipping route for tomorrow?”.

The possibility to apply the intercriteria analysis over normalized data is discussed. An example, related to evaluation of crude oil data, is given.

XML is undoubtedly becoming the predominant de facto standard for data representation and communication, especially on the web, which in turn is causing XML data repositories to grow rapidly. Current XML Query languages, such as Xquery, have limited capabilities in querying multiple data sources with different structures (schemas) which is inefficient. Therefore, an urgent need has been identified for XML querying techniques that can overcome the rising diversity in XML data schemas. In this work, we propose our approach of using Intuitionistic Fuzzy Trees (IFTr) to achieve approximate XML query matching by considering a novel approach of matching arcs as basic units of data schemas. Additionally, we provide an algorithm for rewriting the original query to be able to retrieve data from local data sources. Our approach was tested using synthetic data sources with high degree of structural diversity, and it proved useful result while pertaining good performance and low memory usage.

As XML is becoming the de facto standard for data representation and communication, especially on the web, a need has been identified for efficient XML querying techniques that can overcome the dilemma of heterogeneity in XML data sources. In this work, we propose our approach of using Intuitionistic Fuzzy Trees (IFTr) to achieve approximate XML query matching, making the query results include not just the XML data trees that exactly match the query, but also the ones that partially match it. We believe that our approach has a potential to return useful query answers while pertaining good performance.

Primary Care Prescribing is one of the most complex established NHS therapeutic processes. A wide array of drugs is prescribed on a regular and irregular basis to a large cohort of the population. The prescribing budget funds the costs of drugs prescribed in primary care. Typically a primary care trust overspends its prescribing budgets on drugs with dynamic prescribing patterns and pricing. Furthermore, prescribing patterns are an accurate indicator of the quality of healthcare provided in primary care. In this paper a data warehousing approach is proposed that allows integrating prescribing data from different GP practices, equipped with an adhoc OLAP utility that allows measurement of the local prescribing activity within available resources.

Data Warehouse (DWH) Models are based on static dimensions having single hierarchies. With the evolution of World Wide Web, including external knowledge can enrich those models and provide better results of data analysis. Therefore, it would be useful to have intelligent transformation utilities that can mine various data structures and extract useful knowledge participating in the construction of flexible DWH models. This paper proposes a new approach towards intelligent transformation utilities that will allow the utilisation of multiple hierarchical schemata when defining the dimensions of data-warehouses. By allowing a particular dimension to have multiple but semantically close definitions, we allow same users to query same data with the aid of different semantics. To put it differently users are allowed to change or refine the axis of analysis with respect to a particular query, in their effort to achieve a more meaningful answer. We make use of Intuitionistic Fuzzy Logic to soften the rules of calculating the similarity between different hierarchies which in turn is used to decide if the hierarchies can be included in the definition of data warehouse dimension. Data transformations are used to transform the data from one hierarchy to another. With the aid of external data, some sort of estimation is used to estimate values of new hierarchy levels and then based on the user's request the desired hierarchy is used to view an OLAP cube.

Query answering requirements for a knowledge based treatment of user requests led us to introduce the concept of closure of an Intuitionistic fuzzy set over a universe that has a hierarchical structure. We introduce the automatic analysis of queries according to concepts defined as part of a knowledge based hierarchy in order to guide the query answering as part of an integrated database environment with the aid of hierarchical Intuitionistic fuzzy sets, H-IFS. In this paper based on the notion of H-IFS we propose an ad-hoc utility build on top of Oracle10g that allows us to enhance the query capabilities of by providing better and knowledgeable answers to userpsilas requests. The theoretical aspects as well the practical issues and achieved results are presented throughout the rest of the paper.

In this paper we revise the context of ldquovalue imprecisionrdquo, as part of an knowledge-based environment. We present our approach for including value imprecision as part of a non-rigid hierarchical structures of organization. This led us to introduce the concept of closure of an intuitionistic fuzzy set over a universe that has a hierarchical structure. Intuitively, in the closure of this intuitionistic fuzzy set, the ldquokind ofrdquo relation is taken into account by propagating the degree associated with an element to its sub-elements in the hierarchy. We introduce the automatic analysis according to concepts defined as part of a knowledge hierarchy in order to guide the query answering as part of an integrated database environment with the aid of hierarchical intuitionistic fuzzy sets.

In the Bulgarian health care system patients are transferred between different health care units within the health care facility, and occasionally between units that are far apart, depending on the stage of the patient's treatment progress. Determining patient resource consumption prior to utilization is vital for the management and planning of health care resources. In this paper we propose a generalized net model of patient flows that can be used to evaluate the current design (or alternative designs) in order to improve the management of the diagnostic consultative centres.

In this paper we revise the context of "value uncertainty", as part of an OLAP based environment. A new multidimensional-cubic model named as the if-cube is introduced which is able to operate over data with imprecision either in the facts or in the dimensional hierarchies. These query requirements led us to introduce the concept of closure of an intuitionistic fuzzy set over a universe that has a hierarchical structure, H-IFS. We introduce the automatic recommendation of analysis according to the concepts defined as part of a domain ontology in order to guide the decision making with the aid of H-IFS.

In recent years, the providers of public and private sector health care services have been faced with some radical changes in the society they serve, and more importantly, development in the way that traditional health care is delivered to Information Technology (I.T) based communities. It is widely believed by health care professionals that the better health care results really come from the improved healthcare systems and more effective health care services' management. This paper focuses on using an agnet-based software engineering approach and design models to the development of an appropriate agent-based healthcare software system is described in which software researchers collaborate with environment builders to enhance the levels of cooperation and support provided within an integrated agent-based community healthcare system.

On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) tools use multidimensional views to provide quick access to information. They have become the de facto standard in the business world for analytical databases. In health care, care givers and managers could benefit from being able to perform interactive data exploration, ad-hoc analysis and possibly discover hidden trends and patterns in health data. However, health data have unique characteristics that distinguish them from common business examples, an aspect that makes the direct adaptation of the already established business oriented solutions difficult. In this paper we report the development of an OLAP system for analyzing hospital discharge data and for modeling hospital length of stay.

There is increasing worldwide awareness that bionics and artificial intelligence will play an important role in microbial analysis. An intelligent data-warehouse system consisting of an odour generation mechanism, rapid volatile delivery and recovery system, and a classifier system based on neural networks and genetic algorithms have been applied as part of a microbial analysis. The microbiological warehouse environment has, also adopted the concept of fusion of multiple classifiers dedicated to specific feature parameters. The experimental results confirm the soundness of the presented methods.

This work presents a framework for Web mining, which is developed to support and assist existing data mining algorithms in order to preliminarily refine browsing pattern with relevant constraints. Intuitionistic fuzzy sets are used to represent the possibility that backward steps are used while searching for the pages of interest.

With the rapid growing number of WWW users, hidden information becomes ever increasingly valuable. As a consequence of this phenomenon, mining Web data and analysing on-line users' behaviour and their on-line traversal pattern have emerged as a new area of research. Primarily based on the Web servers' log files, the main objective of traversal pattern mining is to discover the frequent patterns in users' browsing paths and behaviors. This paper presents a complete framework for Web mining, allowing users to pre-define physical constraints when analysing complex traversal patterns in order to improve the efficiency of algorithms and offer flexibility in producing the results.

Recently, the use of smell in clinical diagnosis has been rediscovered due to major advances in odour sensing technology and artificial intelligence. It was well known in the past that a number of infectious or metabolic diseases could liberate specific odours characteristic of the disease stage and among others, urine volatile compounds have been identified as possible diagnostic markers. A newly developed electronic nose based on chemoresistive sensors has been employed to identify in vitro 13 bacterial clinical isolates, collected from patients diagnosed with urinary tract infections, gastrointestinal and respiratory infections, and in vivo urine samples from patients with suspected uncomplicated UTI who were scheduled for microbiological analysis in a UK Health Laboratory environment. An intelligent model consisting of an odour generation mechanism, rapid volatile delivery and recovery system, and a classifier system based on a neural networks, genetic algorithms, and multivariate techniques such as principal components analysis and discriminant function analysis-cross validation. The experimental results confirm the validity of the presented methods.

The increasing need for applications to utilise a community of information providers in their effort to answer an information request has been a lasting problem of research. In requesting a community of information providers two types of incompatibility may occur, namely structural and semantic. The former may be caused by differences in the attribute domain, format, units, and granularity (intentional inconsistencies). The latter can be caused by attribute value conflict, since similar defined attributes utilise different levels of a conceptual hierarchy (tree, lattice) in defining themselves (extensional inconsistencies).

Workflows are activities involving the coordinated execution of multiple tasks performed by entities, in the enterprise environment. Workflow systems support the encoding and execution of workflows. A workflow management system is proposed, in which a considerable attention is paid on the utilisation of the services of a flexible database formalism. Flexible database formalisms must permit the modelling of trends, seasonality (periodicity), cyclic variations of trends and irregular activities (no predictable patterns) in the enterprise environment Furthermore, the formalism must permit the, expression of enterprise concepts founded in various conceptual levels. This paper will be restricted in workflow management system design, and activity scheduling, in a post relational environment whereas relational operators utilise paths (links between domains), in order to express interdependencies between activities.