Soft Computing Based Epidemical Crisis Prediction

Epidemical crisis prediction is one of the most challenging examples of decision making with uncertain information. As in many other types of crises, epidemic outbreaks may pose various degrees of surprise as well as various degrees of “derivatives” of the surprise (i.e., the speed and acceleration of the surprise). Often, crises such as epidemic outbreaks are accompanied by a secondary set of crises, which might pose a more challenging prediction problem. One of the unique features of epidemic crises is the amount of fuzzy data related to the outbreak that spreads through numerous communication channels, including media and social networks. Hence, the key for improving epidemic crises prediction capabilities is in employing sound techniques for data collection, information processing, and decision making under uncertainty and exploiting the modalities and media of the spread of the fuzzy information related to the outbreak. Fuzzy logic-based techniques are some of the most promising approaches for crisis management. Furthermore, complex fuzzy graphs can be used to formalize the techniques and methods used for the data mining. Another advantage of the fuzzy-based approach is that it enables keeping account of events with perceived low possibility of occurrence via low fuzzy membership/truth-values and updating these values as information is accumulated or changed. In this chapter we introduce several soft computing based methods and tools for epidemic crises prediction. In addition to classical fuzzy techniques, the use of complex fuzzy graphs as well as incremental fuzzy clustering in the context of complex and high order fuzzy logic system is presented.