The management of any modern organisation involves data. The volume of information is becoming almost prohibitive for even the most up-to-date computer system. But big data technologies are enabling new paths to deal with the information and get an approximate solution in a reasonable time-frame instead of an exact result taking much longer.

This year, 2020, sees the launch of the conference series: Modern Management based on Big Data (MMBD). MMBD deals with two main branches: Big Data and Modern Management. The former includes, among other things: data capture and storage; search, sharing and analytics; big data search, mining and visualization; big data technologies; data visualization; architectures for massive parallel processing; data mining tools and techniques; machine learning algorithms for big data; cloud computing platforms; distributed file systems and databases; scalable storage systems; big data for business; and government and society. The latter encompasses: modern management; management strategy; management decision making; manufacturing systems; logistic systems; facilities planning; cost analysis; engineering economy; total quality management; management information systems; human factor engineering; and human resources.

This book contains papers accepted for and presented at MMBD 2020. The conference was originally scheduled to be held from 18–21 October 2020 in Beijing, the capital city of China, to provide a high-level platform for experts and scholars from all over the world to share the latest ideas on big data and management and foster the prosperity of the discipline. However, due to the outbreak of COVID-19 around the world and for the safety of our participants, MMBD 2020 has been changed from an on-site conference in Beijing to a virtual conference with no physical participation, although with a high interaction, and the conference will be held online from 18–21 October 2020.

All papers have been conscientiously reviewed by programme committee members bearing in mind the breadth and depth of the research topics that fall within the scope of MMBD. From 68 submissions, 17 most promising and FAIA mainstream-relevant contributions have been included in this volume. These present original ideas or results of general significance supported by clear reasoning and compelling evidence and methods.

I would like to thank all the keynote and invited speakers, authors and anonymous reviewers for their efforts in making MMBD a conference of the highest standard. We are also very grateful to all those people who devoted their time to assessing the papers; especially the programme committee members and reviewers. It is an honour to be involved from the beginning with the publication of these proceedings as part of 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.

Last but not least, any inconvenience caused by the format change from face-to-face to virtual is sincerely regretted. Hopefully we will all meet face-to-face at the MMBD2021 conference next year, which is scheduled to be held in Xiamen, China, with the support of the Business School of Huaqiao University.

Antonio J. Tallón-Ballesteros

University of Huelva (Spain)

Seville City, Spain

August 2020