Information processing has become a pervasive phenomenon in our civilization. Massive access to information resources and their use as intelligent systems in everyday applications is advantaged by the most recent research in information technologies. While the majority of information processing is becoming intelligent in a very broad sense, major research in Semantics, Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Engineering supports the domain specific applications that are becoming more and more present in our everyday living. Intelligent Systems are present in a wide range of situations that include facets of simple everyday actions and sometimes not so simple aspects such as transport systems and even the medical domain. Digital news, socialization of relations, and enhancements derived from the handling of expert decisions are but a few examples of everyday applications.

Ontologies play a major role in the development of knowledge engineering in various domains, from semantic web down to the design of specific decision support systems. They are used for the specification of natural language semantics, information modeling and retrieval in querying systems, geographical information systems, medical information systems, the list is growing continuously. Ontologies allow easy modeling of heterogeneous information, flexible reasoning for the derivation of consequents or the search of query answers, specification of a priori knowledge, increasing accumulation of new facts and relations, i.e. reflexive ontologies. Therefore, they are becoming key components of adaptable information processing systems. Classical problems such as ontology matching or instantiation, has new and more complex formulations and solutions, involving a mixture of underlying technologies, from traditional logic up to fuzzy logic. Research on ontologies and their applications is a highly active front of current computational intelligence science.

Much of modern machine learning has become a branch of statistics and probabilistic system modeling. The Bayesian paradigm is becoming dominant, because it allows the formulation of elegant chains of reasoning to deal with uncertainty. Linear approaches to feature extraction and enrichments for discriminant systems have also a surprising revival from the hand of kernel theory and Bayesian sparse modeling. In the background, the establishment of a sound methodology to assess the value of the systems is a continuous endeavor that is also strongly anchored in statistics, approaches based on nature-inspired computing, such as artificial neural networks, have a broad application and are subject of active research.

A very specific new branch of developments is that of Lattice Computing, gathering works under a simple heading “use lattice operators as the underlying algebra for computational designs”. A traditional area of research that falls in this category is Mathematical Morphology as applied to image processing, where image operators are designed on the basis of maximum and minimum operations, a long track of successful applications support the idea that this approach could be fruitful in the framework of intelligent system design. The fruits have been innovative associative memories, image feature extraction and classification algorithms, which include lattice based techniques to manipulate heterogeneous information sources.

For more than 15 years, KES International and its annual organized events, have served as a platform for sharing the latest developments in Intelligent Systems. Organized by the Computational Intelligence Group of the University of the Basque Country and the computer graphics leading institute Vicomtech-IK4, the 16th Annual KES conference, was held in the beautiful city of San Sebastian in the north of Spain. (http://kes2012.kesinternational.org/index.php) Extracted from the conference, this book presents the best contributions received and presented by leading experts all over the world who joined us to share their latest achievements in this domain. The quality of these contributions clearly show that knowledge engineering is more than a trendy topic, but a continuous living and evolving set of technologies aimed to improve the design and understanding of systems and their relations with humans.

As editors of these selected readings, we are proud to present these articles that travel from theoretical and basic research conceptualizations to real world applications. We must thank the large number of people that have contributed to the success of this endeavor by managing the reception of papers and monitoring their review: Bruno Apolloni, Floriana Esposito, Ngoc Thanh Nguyen, Anne Hakansson, Tuan D. Pham, Ron Hartung, Andreas Nuernberger, Honghai Liu, Kazuhiko Tsuda , Nobuo Suzuki, Masakazu Takahashi, Hirokazu Taki, Masato Soga, Antonio Fernández-Caballero , Rafael Martínez-Tomás, Naoto Mukai, Taketoshi Ushiama , Toyohide Watanabe, Tomoko Kojiri, Piotr Jêdrzejowicz, Ireneusz Czarnowski, Alfredo Cuzzocrea, Kazumi Nakamatsu, Jair Minoro Abe, Gloria Bueno, Grégory Maclair, Cesar Sanín, Edward Szczerbicki, Cecilia Zanni-Merk , Richard Duro, Takahira Yamaguchi, Katsutoshi Yada, Gregory Zacharewic, Akinoro Abe, Yukio Ohsawa, Jeffrey W. Tweedale, Otoniel Mario López Granado, Adriana Dapena Janeiro, Nicolás Guil Mata, Yuji Iwahori, Yoshinori Adachi, Nobuhiro Inuzuka, Jun Munemori, Takaya Yuizono, Antonio Moreno, Hajer Baazaoui, Aida Valls, Nesrine Ben Mustapha, Arkadiusz Kawa, Pawel Pawlewski, Norio Baba, Hisao Shiizuka, Junzo Watada, Katsutoshi Yada and Takahira Yamaguchi.

We want to express our gratitude to the International Programme Committee which is the academic backbone supporting this conference series:

Dr. Ahmad Taher Azar IGI Global, USA

Prof. Isabelle Bichindaritz University of Washington Tacoma, USA

Dr Mihai Boicu George Mason University, USA

Dr Gloria Bordogna National Research Council of Italy , Italy

Dr. Zaki Brahmi RIADI Laboratory, Manouba University, Tunisia.

Prof. Michele Ceccarelli University of Sannio, Italy

Dr. Igor Chikalov King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia

Prof. Alfredo Cuzzocrea University of Calabria, Italy

Prof. Colette Faucher LSIS-Polytech’Marseille, France

Prof. Alexandra Grancharova Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria

Prof. Manuel Graña University of the Basque Country, Spain

Prof. Ioannis Hatzilygeroudis University of Patras, Greece

Prof. Robert J.Howlett Bournemouth University, UK

Dr.Shraddha Ingale Pune University, India

Dr Ivan Jordanov University of Portsmouth, UK

Prof. Vladimir Jotsov State University for Library Studies and Information Technologies, Bulgaria

Dr. Luis Kabongo Vicomtech Research Centre, Spain

Prof. Petia Koprinkova-Hristova Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria

Dr. Carlos Lamsfus CIC Tourgune, Spain

Prof. Chengjun Liu New Jersey Institute of Technology,USA

Prof. Ignac Lovrek University of Zagreb, Croatia

Dr. Minhua Ma Glasgow School of Art, Scotland, UK

Dr. Noel M. Martin Defence Science and Technology Organisation and University of South Australia

Dr. Kenji Matsuura The Univ. of Tokushima, Japan

Prof. Emilia Mendes Zayed University, Dubai, UAE

Prof. Mikhail Moshkov King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia

Prof. Hirofumi Nagashino The University of Tokushima, Japan

Prof. Ioannis K. Nikolos Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece.

Dr. Carlos Ocampo-Martinez Polytechnic University of Catalunia, Spain

Prof. Cezary Orlowski Gdansk University of Technology, Poland

Dr. Jorge Posada Vicomtech Research Centre, Spain

Prof. Jim Prentzas Democritus University of Thrace, Greece

Prof. Marcello Sanguineti University of Genova, Italy

Dr. Cesar Sanin University of Newcastle, Australia

Prof. Ricardo Sotaquirá Universidad de la Sabána, Columbia

Prof. Edward Szczerbicki University of Newcastle, Australia

Prof. Eulalia Szmidt Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland

Dr. Steve Thatcher University of South Australia, Australia

Prof. Peter Tino The University of Birmingham, UK

Dr. Carlos Toro Vicomtech Research Centre, Spain

Dr. Jeffrey W. Tweedale Defence Science and Technology Organisation and University of South Australia

Prof. Eiji Uchino Yamaguchi University, Japan

Prof. Juan D. Velasquez Silva University of Chile, Chile

Dr. Gregory Zacharewicz Université de Bordeaux 1, France

Dr. Cecilia Zanni-Merk INSA-Strasbourg, France

Prof. Guangquan Zhang University of Technology Sydney, Australia

Dr. Beata M Zielosko King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia

Finally we acknowledge the support of the Basque Government, Vicomtech-IK4 and the University of the Basque Country helping to the success of this meeting.

Manuel Graña

Jorge Posada

Carlos Toro

Robert J. Howlett

Lakhmi C. Jain