This book focuses on next generation data technologies in support of collective and computational intelligence. The book brings various next generation data technologies together to capture, integrate, analyze, mine, annotate and visualize distributed data – made available from various community users – in a meaningful and collaborative for the organization manner. A unique perspective on collective computational intelligence is offered by embracing both theory and strategies fundamentals such as data clustering, graph partitioning, collaborative decision making, self-adaptive ant colony, swarm and evolutionary agents. It also covers emerging and next generation technologies in support of collective computational intelligence such as Web 2.0 social networks, semantic web for data annotation, knowledge representation and inference, data privacy and security, and enabling distributed and collaborative paradigms such as P2P, Grid and Cloud Computing due to the geographically dispersed and distributed nature of the data. The book aims to cover in a comprehensive manner the combinatorial effort of utilizing and integrating various next generations collaborative and distributed data technologies for computational intelligence in various scenarios. The book also distinguishes itself by assessing whether utilization and integration of next generation data technologies can assist in the identification of new opportunities, which may also be strategically fit for purpose.

This book focuses on next generation data technologies in support of collective and computational intelligence. The book brings various next generation data technologies together to capture, integrate, analyze, mine, annotate and visualize distributed data – made available from various community users – in a meaningful and collaborative for the organization manner. A unique perspective on collective computational intelligence is offered by embracing both theory and strategies fundamentals such as data clustering, graph partitioning, collaborative decision making, self-adaptive ant colony, swarm and evolutionary agents. It also covers emerging and next generation technologies in support of collective computational intelligence such as Web 2.0 social networks, semantic web for data annotation, knowledge representation and inference, data privacy and security, and enabling distributed and collaborative paradigms such as P2P, Grid and Cloud Computing due to the geographically dispersed and distributed nature of the data. The book aims to cover in a comprehensive manner the combinatorial effort of utilizing and integrating various next generations collaborative and distributed data technologies for computational intelligence in various scenarios. The book also distinguishes itself by assessing whether utilization and integration of next generation data technologies can assist in the identification of new opportunities, which may also be strategically fit for purpose.

Recently, cryptology problems, such as designing good cryptographic systems and analyzing them, have been challenging researchers. Many algorithms that take advantage of approaches based on computational intelligence techniques, such as genetic algorithms, genetic programming, and so on, have been proposed to solve these issues. Implementing Computational Intelligence Techniques for Security Systems Design is an essential research book that explores the application of computational intelligence and other advanced techniques in information security, which will contribute to a better understanding of the factors that influence successful security systems design. Featuring a range of topics such as encryption, self-healing systems, and cyber fraud, this book is ideal for security analysts, IT specialists, computer engineers, software developers, technologists, academicians, researchers, practitioners, and students.

Collective intelligence has become one of major research issues studied by today’s and future computer science. Computational collective intelligence is understood as this form of group intellectual activity that emerges from collaboration and compe- tion of many artificial individuals. Robotics, artificial intelligence, artificial cognition and group working try to create efficient models for collective intelligence in which it emerges from sets of actions carried out by more or less intelligent individuals. The major methodological, theoretical and practical aspects underlying computational collective intelligence are group decision making, collective action coordination, collective competition and knowledge description, transfer and integration. Obviously, the application of multiple computational technologies such as fuzzy systems, evo- tionary computation, neural systems, consensus theory, knowledge representation etc. is necessary to create new forms of computational collective intelligence and support existing ones. Three subfields of application of computational technologies to support forms of collective intelligence are of special attention to us. The first one is semantic web treated as an advanced tool that increases the collective intelligence in networking environments. The second one covers social networks modeling and analysis, where social networks are this area of in which various forms of computational collective intelligence emerges in a natural way. The third subfield relates us to agent and mul- agent systems understood as this computational and modeling paradigm which is especially tailored to capture the nature of computational collective intelligence in populations of autonomous individuals.

Computational Intelligence (CI) community has developed hundreds of algorithms for intelligent data analysis, but still many hard problems in computer vision, signal processing or text and multimedia understanding, problems that require deep learning techniques, are open. Modern data mining packages contain numerous modules for data acquisition, pre-processing, feature selection and construction, instance selection, classification, association and approximation methods, optimization techniques, pattern discovery, clusterization, visualization and post-processing. A large data mining package allows for billions of ways in which these modules can be combined. No human expert can claim to explore and understand all possibilities in the knowledge discovery process. This is where algorithms that learn how to learnl come to rescue. Operating in the space of all available data transformations and optimization techniques these algorithms use meta-knowledge about learning processes automatically extracted from experience of solving diverse problems. Inferences about transformations useful in different contexts help to construct learning algorithms that can uncover various aspects of knowledge hidden in the data. Meta-learning shifts the focus of the whole CI field from individual learning algorithms to the higher level of learning how to learn. This book defines and reveals new theoretical and practical trends in meta-learning, inspiring the readers to further research in this exciting field.

Although computational intelligence and soft computing are both well-known fields, using computational intelligence and soft computing in conjunction is an emerging concept. This combination can effectively be used in practical areas of various fields of research. Applied Computational Intelligence and Soft Computing in Engineering is an essential reference work featuring the latest scholarly research on the concepts, paradigms, and algorithms of computational intelligence and its constituent methodologies such as evolutionary computation, neural networks, and fuzzy logic. Including coverage on a broad range of topics and perspectives such as cloud computing, sampling in optimization, and swarm intelligence, this publication is ideally designed for engineers, academicians, technology developers, researchers, and students seeking current research on the benefits of applying computation intelligence techniques to engineering and technology.

The purpose of the 12th Conference Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing (SNPD 2011) held on July 6-8, 2011 in Sydney, Australia was to bring together scientists, engineers, computer users, and students to share their experiences and exchange new ideas and research results about all aspects (theory, applications and tools) of computer and information sciences, and to discuss the practical challenges encountered along the way and the solutions adopted to solve them. The conference organizers selected 14 outstanding papers from SNPD 2011, all of which you will find in this volume of Springer’s Studies in Computational Intelligence.