Fuzzy Systems and Data Mining (FSDM) is a consolidated annual international conference comprising four main themes: a) fuzzy theory, algorithm and system, including topics like stability, foundations and control; b) fuzzy application, covering different kinds of processing as well as hardware and architectures for big data and time series with applicability, among other things, to recognition and diagnostics, multimedia and industry; c) the interdisciplinary field of fuzzy logic and data mining, encompassing applications in electrical, industrial, chemical, bio- and many other types of engineering, as well as management and environmental issues; and d) data mining, outlining new approaches to big data, massive data, scalable, parallel and distributed algorithms.

This annual conference was first held in Shanghai in 2015, and has taken place in a different city each year. Up to now, two countries have hosted the conference. Following the great success of FSDM 2015, held in Shanghai (China), the second edition took place in Macau (China), the third edition in the FSDM series was hosted by National Dong Hwa University in Hualien, Taiwan (China), and the fourth edition was held in Bangkok (Thailand). The fifth edition of the series, FSDM 2019, is being held in Kitakyushu, Japan, making Japan the third country to host the conference, and provides an important meeting point for experts, researchers, academics and delegates from industry to present the latest advances in the field of fuzzy systems and data mining.

This book includes the papers accepted and presented at the 5th International Conference on Fuzzy Systems and Data Mining (FSDM 2019), held in Kitakyushu, Japan on 18–21 October 2019. All manuscripts were carefully reviewed by program committee members, bearing in mind the quality, novelty, soundness, breadth and depth of the research topics falling within the scope of FSDM. Additionally, FSDM 2019 was a reference and outstanding conference which attracted four remarkable keynote speakers, three of them from overseas: Prof. Takeshi Yamakawa, Professor Emeritus of Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan and Founding Director of Fuzzy Logic Systems Institute (FLSI), Japan; Prof. Sheng-Lung Peng from the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan; Dr. Chetneti Srisa-An from the College of Digital Innovation and Information Technology, Rangsit University, Thailand; and Prof. Dr. Malin Song, Dean of the Graduate School, Anhui University of Finance and Economics, China. Previous proceedings have been published as part of the prestigious series Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications (FAIA) by the publishers IOS Press, and are as follows: Vol. 281, Vol. 293, Vol. 299 and Vol. 309 for FSDM 2015, FSDM 2016, FSDM 2017 and FSDM 2018, respectively. You are now reading the FAIA volume introducing the selected contributions from FSDM 2019.

This year, FSDM received 442 submissions. After an intense and avid discussion stage the committee, which is composed of many experts, decided to accept 137 papers, which represents an acceptance rate of about 30%. As a follow-up to the conference, some well-known and respected journals such as IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, the International Journal of Fuzzy Systems, Entropy, Symmetry, Algorithms and Evolutionary Intelligence, the Journal of Nonlinear and Convex Analysis and the Journal of Information Science and Engineering are planning to publish special issues in; this is an important achievement as the number of journal issues is increasing yearly.

I want to express our special thanks to all the keynote and invited speakers and authors who put their effort into preparing a contribution for the conference. We are also very grateful to all those people, especially the program committee members and reviewers, who devoted time to evaluating the papers. It is an honor to continue with the publication of these proceedings in the prestigious series Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications (FAIA) from IOS Press. Our particular thanks also go to J. Breuker, N. Guarino, J.N. Kok, R. López de Mántaras, J. Liu, R. Mizoguchi, M. Musen, S.K. Pal and N. Zhong, the FAIA series editors, for supporting this conference.

August 2019

Antonio J. Tallón-Ballesteros

University of Huelva

Seville, Spain