Design and implementation of a case-based reasoning system for marketing plans

Unstructured intangible experiences and knowledge are usually difficult to represent and instantiate, which engenders the hardship of knowledge transfer and sharing. Past marketing plans are such valuable documents containing strategic planning knowledge and experiences.Case-Based Reasoning (CBR), which consists of retrieving, reusing, revising, and retaining cases, has been proved effective in retrieving information and knowledge from prior situations and being widely researched and applied in a great variety of problem territories.This paper targets at designing a CBR architecture and a method that facilitate the sharing and retrieving of cases of great concern to the marketing personnel. After an intensive survey of CBR methods and applications, a CBR system embedding multi-attribute decision making method, which provides both overall similarity level and similarity level of each selected attribute, is proposed to enhance the adaptation of a new marketing plan. In addition, a multi-attribute gap analysis diagram is developed to visualize the similarity along with the gap between candidate and target cases, so as to better support interaction and group decision making in the process of strategically formulating a new marketing plan. The CBR system was implemented and successfully demonstrated on case retrieval of a telecommunication company.     

范例推理在智能决策系统中的应用研究

范例推理是人工智能中重要的推理方法和机器学习技术,它也是智能系统中实用的技术之一。基于范例的决策是决策者认知心理的决策过程的一个合理描述,它提供了一种实现智能系统及决策的现实环境和技术方法。本文提出了基于范例推理的智能决策技术,给出应用模型,并进行了深入讨论。     

A Bolasso based consistent feature selection enabled random forest classification algorithm: An application to credit risk assessment

Credit risk assessment has been a crucial issue as it forecasts whether an individual will default on loan or not. Classifying an applicant as good or bad debtor helps lender to make a wise decision. The modern data mining and machine learning techniques have been found to be very useful and accurate in credit risk predictive capability and correct decision making. Classification is one of the most widely used techniques in machine learning. To increase prediction accuracy of standalone classifiers while keeping overall cost to a minimum, feature selection techniques have been utilized, as feature selection removes redundant and irrelevant attributes from dataset. This paper initially introduces Bolasso (Bootstrap-Lasso) which selects consistent and relevant features from pool of features. The consistent feature selection is defined as robustness of selected features with respect to changes in dataset Bolasso generated shortlisted features are then applied to various classification algorithms like Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Naïve Bayes (NB) and K-Nearest Neighbors (K-NN) to test its predictive accuracy. It is observed that Bolasso enabled Random Forest algorithm (BS-RF) provides best results forcredit risk evaluation. The classifiers are built on training and test data partition (70:30) of three datasets (Lending Club’s peer to peer dataset, Kaggle’s Bank loan status dataset and German credit dataset obtained from UCI). The performance of Bolasso enabled various classification algorithms is then compared with that of other baseline feature selection methods like Chi Square, Gain Ratio, ReliefF and stand-alone classifiers (no feature selection method applied). The experimental results shows that Bolasso provides phenomenal stability of features when compared with stability of other algorithms. Jaccard Stability Measure (JSM) is used to assess stability of feature selection methods. Moreover BS-RF have good classification accuracy and is better than other methods in terms of AUC and Accuracy resulting in effectively improving the decision making process of lenders.     

A connectionist approach for similarity assessment in case-based reasoning systems

Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) systems support ill-structured decision making. In ill-structured decision environments, decision makers (DMs) differ in their problem solving approaches. As a result, CBR systems would be more useful if they were able to adapt to the idiosyncrasies of individual decision makers. Existing implementations of CBR systems have been mainly symbolic, and symbolic CBR systems are unable to adapt to the preferences of decision makers (i.e., they are static). Retrieval of appropriate previous cases is critical to the success of a CBR system. Widely used symbolic retrieval functions, such as nearest-neighbor matching, assume independence of attributes and require specification of their importance for matching. To ameliorate these deficiencies connectionist systems have been proposed. However, these systems are limited in their ability to adapt and grow. To overcome this limitation, we propose a distributed connectionist-symbolic architecture that adapts to the preferences of a decision maker and that, additionally, ameliorates the limitations of symbolic matching. The proposed architecture uses a supervised learning technique to acquire the matching knowledge. The architecture allows the growth of a case base without the involvement of a knowledge engineer. Empirical investigation of the proposed architecture in an ill-structured diagnostic decision environment demonstrated a superior retrieval performance when compared to the nearest-neighbor matching function.     

Web-based CBR system applied to early cost budgeting for pavement maintenance project

With the growth of transportation networks in developing countries, the cost-efficacy control of maintenance operations has become critical to the infrastructure asset management after highway construction. To effectively manage numerous projects annually with limited resources, it is necessary to accurately estimate costs and leave a trail of project information during the process of making maintenance project selection decisions. This paper outlines the development of a case-based reasoning (CBR) expert prototype system that compares historical data at the work item-level across the case library. This study attempts to determine preliminary project cost with readily available information rapidly based on previous experience of pavement maintenance related construction to assist decision makers in project screening and budget allocation. Various CBR modeling approaches were presented and assessed in terms of their mean absolute prediction error rates. Design and implementation of a web-based CBR system is demonstrated in this study to efficiently handle the attribute and case similarity computation and the results are displayed using browsers. Furthermore, weighting attributes employed in the CBR system were compared via eigenvector and equal weighting methods for estimating aggregate cost and component costs. Historical generic pavement maintenance projects were gathered from the Taiwan transportation agencies and used for model training and testing. Furthermore, k-fold cross-validation was employed to verify the CBR estimating system. The analytical results demonstrate the ability of the system to estimate the item-level cost of pavement maintenance projects with the satisfactory precision during the conceptual project phase. The developed prototype web-based CBR system can efficiently provide timely and accurate information in an efficient way and provide an alternative estimation tool that can be combined with other evaluation criteria, such as indexes of pavement serviceability and structure strength, to improve the decision making in relation to budget allocation.     

Exploring new roles for case-based reasoning in heterogeneous AI systems for medical decision support

Background Supporting medical decision making is a complex task, that offers challenging research issues to Artificial Intelligence (AI) scientists. The Case-based Reasoning (CBR) methodology has been proposed as a possible means for supporting decision making in this domain since the 1980s. Nevertheless, despite the variety of efforts produced by the CBR research community, and the number of issues properly handled by means of this methodology, the success of CBR systems in medicine is somehow limited, and almost no research product has been fully tested and commercialized; one of the main reasons for this may be found in the nature of the problem domain, which is extremely complex and multi-faceted. Materials and methods In this environment, we propose to design a modular architecture, in which several AI methodologies cooperate, to provide decision support. In the resulting context CBR, originally conceived as a well suited reasoning paradigm for medical applications, can extend its original roles, and cover a set of additional tasks. Results and conclusions As an example, in the paper we will show how CBR can be exploited for configuring the parameters relied upon by other (reasoning) modules. Other possible ways of deploying CBR in this domain will be the object of our future investigations, and, in our opinion, a possible research direction for people working on CBR in the health sciences.     

A case-based classifier for hypertension detection

The exploration of three-dimensional (3D) anthropometry scanning data along with other existing subject medical profiles using data mining techniques becomes an important research issue for medical decision support. This research attempts to construct a classification approach based on the hybrid use of case-based reasoning (CBR) and genetic algorithms (GAs) for hypertension detection using anthropometric body surface scanning data. The obtained result reveals the relationship between a subject’s 3D scanning data and hypertension disease. The GA is adopted to determine the appropriate feature weights for CBR. The proposed approaches were experimented and compared with a regular CBR and other widely used approaches including neural nets and decision trees. The experiment showed that applying GA to determine the suitable weights in CBR is a feasible approach to improving the effectiveness of case matching of hypertension disease. It also demonstrated that different weighted CBR approach presents better classification accuracy over the results obtained from other approaches.     

Global optimization of case-based reasoning for breast cytology diagnosis

Case-based reasoning (CBR) is one of the most popular prediction techniques in medical domains because it is easy to apply, has no possibility of overfitting, and provides a good explanation for the output. However, it has a critical limitation – its prediction performance is generally lower than other AI techniques like artificial neural networks (ANN). In order to obtain accurate results from CBR, effective retrieval and matching of useful prior cases for the problem is essential, but it is still a controversial issue to design a good matching and retrieval mechanism for CBR systems. In this study, we propose a novel approach to enhance the prediction performance of CBR. Our suggestion is the simultaneous optimization of feature weights, instance selection, and the number of neighbors that combine using genetic algorithms (GA). Our model improves the prediction performance in three ways – (1) measuring similarity between cases more accurately by considering relative importance of each feature, (2) eliminating useless or erroneous reference cases, and (3) combining several similar cases represent significant patterns. To validate the usefulness of our model, this study applied it to a real-world case for evaluating cytological features derived directly from a digital scan of breast fine needle aspirate (FNA) slides. Experimental results showed that the prediction accuracy of conventional CBR may be improved significantly by using our model. We also found that our proposed model outperformed all the other optimized models for CBR using GA.     

常识知识在事例修改中的应用

事例改写一直是基于事例推理(Case—Based Reasoning，CBR)方法中的难点之一。用知识的观点来诠释基于事例推理，细分了在CBR中所用到的知识，以银行贷款业务为例探讨了常识知识在事例修改中应用的应用方法——综合得分法，并探讨了相应的常识知识的存储。     

Empirical evaluation of retrieval in case-based reasoning systemsusing modified cosine matching function

Case-based reasoning (CBR) supports ill-structured decision making by retrieving previous cases that are useful toward the solution of a new decision problem. The usefulness of previous cases is determined by assessing the similarity of a new case with the previous cases. In this paper, we present a modified form of the cosine matching function that makes it possible to contrast the two cases being matched and to include differences in the importance of features in the new case and the importance of features in the previous case. Our empirical evaluation of a CBR application to a diagnosis and repair task in an electromechanical domain shows that the proposed modified cosine matching function has a superior retrieval performance when compared to the performance of nearest-neighbor and the Tversky's contrast matching functions     

基于案例推理的供应商选择决策支持系统研究

在介绍了基于案例推理方法的基本原理基础之上,分析了基于案例推理技术的供应商选择决策支持系统的工作原理、框架结构及功能;重点论述了基于案例推理的供应商选择决策支持系统中的一些关键步骤,并结合实例给出了基于案例推理的供应商选择与评价方法,用来验证基于案例推理技术在供应商选择决策支持系统中应用的可行性和有效性,为企业供应商选择决策提供了一个系统模型。     

案例推理变权值引擎模型及权值计算方法

在案例推理（CBR）案例检索匹配中,不同案例通常由不同的特征构成。而传统的CBR引擎模型大多采用固定权值模式,导致系统在匹配精度方面的性能很低。为了解决这一问题,提出一种CBR变权值引擎模型,在其特征权值计算模块引入人机互动机制,基于群决策法计算主观权值,提出依据专家个体和群体决策差异的主观权值调整方法;基于相似粗糙集法计算客观权值。最后设计了一种综合权值调整算法,通过计算主观权值和客观权值间的距离,判断两者的偏离程度,从而推导出权值调整系数,得到最终的权值调整结果。通过网络攻击案例进行的算例分析和仿真实验验证了上述方法的正确性和优越性。     

An integrated approach for the consideration of uncertainty in decision making supported by Life Cycle Assessment

This paper presents an approach for the integrated consideration of both technical and valuation uncertainties during decision making supported by environmental performance information based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Key elements of this approach include “distinguishability analysis” to determine whether the uncertainty in the performance information is likely to make it impossible to distinguish between the activities under consideration, and the use of a multivariate statistical analysis approach, called principal components analysis (PCA), which facilitates the rapid analysis of large numbers of parallel sets of results, and enables the identification of choices that lead to similar and/or opposite evaluations of activities. The integrated approach for the management of uncertainty is demonstrated for a technology selection decision for the recommissioning of a coal-based power station. The results of the case study decision suggest that stakeholder involvement in preference modelling is important, and that the “encoding” of value judgements and preferences into LCA environmental performance information is to be avoided. The approach presented in this paper provides a foundation for the consideration of the implications of diversity in values and preferences as part of an overall approach to promote effective decision making based on LCA environmental performance information. However, the approach is more universally applicable – it can be used wherever multiple criteria decision analysis is used to assist in the resolution of complex decision situations.     

基于CBR应急保障物流体智能决策支持系统研究

在对应急决策和应急保障物流体分析的基础上,应用基于案例推理技术和智能决策方法构建了应急保障物流体智能决策支持系统,讨论了系统的工作原理及体系结构,重点分析了系统的案例推理机制和关键技术,从而为应急状态下的物流保障决策和原形系统的开发提供了理论支撑。     

Integrating gray system theory and logistic regression into case-based reasoning for safety assessment of thermal power plants

Safety assessment of thermal power plants (TPPs) is one of the important means to guarantee the safety of production in thermal power production enterprises. Due to various technical limitations, existing assessment approaches, such as analytic hierarchy process (AHP), Monte Carlo methods, artificial neural network (ANN), etc., are unable to meet the requirements of the complex security assessment of TPPs. Currently, most of the security assessments of TPP are completed by the means of experts’ evaluations. Accordingly, the assessment conclusions are greatly affected by the subjectivity of the experts. Essentially, the evaluation of power plant systems relies to a large extent on the knowledge and length of experience of the experts. Therefore in this domain case-based reasoning (CBR) is introduced for the security assessment of TPPs since this methodology models expertise through experience management. Taking the management system of TPPs as breakthrough point, this paper presents a case-based approach for the Safety assessment decision support of TPPs (SATPP). First, this paper reviews commonly used approaches for TPPs security assessment and the current general evaluation process of TPPs security assessment. Then a framework for the Management System Safety Assessment of Thermal Power Plants (MSSATPP) is constructed and an intelligent decision support system for MSSATPP (IDSS-MSSATPP) is functionally designed. IDSS-MSSATPP involves several key technologies and methods such as knowledge representation and case matching. A novel case matching method named Improved Gray CBR (IGCBR) has been developed in which a statistical approach (logistic regression) and Gray System theory are integrated. Instead of applying Gray System theory directly, it has been improved to integrate it better into CBR. In addition this paper describes an experimental prototype system of IDSS-MSSATPP (CBRsys-TPP) in which IGCBR is integrated. The experimental results based on a MSSATPP data set show that CBRsys-TPP has high accuracy and systematically good performance. Further comparative studies with several other common classification approaches also show its competitive power in terms of accuracy and the synergistic effects of the integrated components.     

Hybrid genetic algorithms and case-based reasoning systems for customer classification

Abstract: Because of its convenience and strength in complex problem solving, case-based reasoning (CBR) has been widely used in various areas. One of these areas is customer classification, which classifies customers into either purchasing or non-purchasing groups. Nonetheless, compared to other machine learning techniques, CBR has been criticized because of its low prediction accuracy. Generally, in order to obtain successful results from CBR, effective retrieval of useful prior cases for the given problem is essential. However, designing a good matching and retrieval mechanism for CBR systems is still a controversial research issue. Most previous studies have tried to optimize the weights of the features or the selection process of appropriate instances. But these approaches have been performed independently until now. Simultaneous optimization of these components may lead to better performance than naive models. In particular, there have been few attempts to simultaneously optimize the weights of the features and the selection of instances for CBR. Here we suggest a simultaneous optimization model of these components using a genetic algorithm. To validate the usefulness of our approach, we apply it to two real-world cases for customer classification. Experimental results show that simultaneously optimized CBR may improve the classification accuracy and outperform various optimized models of CBR as well as other classification models including logistic regression, multiple discriminant analysis, artificial neural networks and support vector machines.     

An intelligent supplier evaluation,selection and development system

Supplier evaluation and selection process has a critical role and significant impact on purchasing management in supply chain. It is also a complex multiple criteria decision making problem which is affected by several conflicting factors. Due to multiple criteria effects the evaluation and selection process, deciding which criteria have the most critical roles in decision making is a very important step for supplier selection, evaluation and particularly development. With this study, a hybridization of fuzzy c-means (FCM) and rough set theory (RST) techniques is proposed as a new solution for supplier selection, evaluation and development problem. First the vendors are clustered with FCM algorithm then the formed clusters are represented by their prototypes that are used for labeling the clusters. RST is used at the next step of modeling where we discover the primary features in other words the core evaluation criteria of the suppliers and extract the decision rules for characterizing the clusters. The obtained results show that the proposed method not only selects the best supplier(s), also clusters all of the vendors with respect to fuzzy similarity degrees, decides the most critical criteria for supplier evaluation and extracts the decision rules about data.     

Principal component case-based reasoning ensemble for business failure prediction

Case-based reasoning (CBR) has several advantages for business failure prediction (BFP), including ease of understanding, explanation, and implementation and the ability to make suggestions on how to avoid failure. We constructed a new ensemble method of CBR that we termed principal component CBR ensemble (PC-CBR-E): it, was intended to improve the predictive ability of CBR in BFP by integrating the feature selection methods in the representation level, a hybrid of principal component analysis with its two classical CBR algorithms at the modeling level and weighted majority voting at the ensemble level. We statistically validated our method by comparing it with other methods, including the best base model, multivariate discriminant analysis, logistic regression, and the two classical CBR algorithms. The results from a one-tailed significance test indicated that PC-CBR-E produced superior predictive performance in Chinese short-term and medium-term BFP.     

A Method for Decision Making Based on Generalized Aggregation Operators

A new method for decision making based on generalized aggregation operators is presented. We use a concept that it is known in the literature as the index of maximum and minimum level (IMAM). This index uses distance measures and other techniques that are very useful for decision making. In this paper, it is suggested a generalization by using generalized and quasi‐arithmetic means. As a result, it is obtained the generalized and quasi‐arithmetic weighted IMAM (GWIMAM and quasi‐WIMAM) and the generalized ordered weighted averaging IMAM (GOWAIMAM) and the quasi‐OWAIMAM operator. The main advantage is that it provides a parameterized family of aggregation operators that includes a wide range of special cases such as the generalized IMAM and the OWAIMAM. Thus, the decision maker may take decisions according to his degree of optimism and considering ideals in the decision process. We also develop an application of the new approach in a decision‐making problem regarding product selection.     

知识管理系统中的CBR技术研究

基于案例的推理技术尝试在计算机上将叙述能力与知识整理进行结合,在为知识管理系统的实现提供了基本的技术保障的同时,也拓宽了推理技术的应用领域。首先讨论了基于案例的推理的一些基本问题,然后借助一个实例探讨了CBR技术在知识管理系统中的应用,并提出了进一步的研究方向。