Current Issue : April-June Volume : 2024 Issue Number : 2 Articles : 5 Articles
The current practice of building thermal retrofitting is based on the outcomes of energy audits that make use of standardized tabulated information mapped on a structure or structural elements under inherently very specific conditions. Therefore, it provides very limited outcomes for further analysis, especially when decision making procedures are required to particularize the retrofitting strategy. This paper introduces a novel fuzzy logic approach for predicting the thermal performance of building walls that can be used in practice to partially substitute time-consuming and costly energy audits or complex computational analyses. The objective of this concept is to forecast the annual heating energy demands of buildings and to identify the potential energy savings that could be achieved by applying thermal retrofitting measures based on limited resources and information obtained from maps, blueprints, and/or a simple site inspection. For this purpose, a sample knowledge base was created using a validated computational model of the heat and moisture transport in the multilayered wall assemblies. Then, the fuzzy logic model was introduced to predict the thermal performance of selected walls. Our comparison of the fuzzy model outputs with simulated data proved the potential of using the proposed concept as an efficient and straightforward tool for predicting the seasonal thermal performance of building envelopes and to partially replace the current practice, which requires the utilization of building energy audits....
Many problems of practical interest can be modeled and solved by using interval-valued fuzzy graph (IVFG) algorithms. An IVFG is a very useful and effective tool for studying various calculations, fields of intelligence, and computer science, such as networking, imaging, and other fields, such as biological sciences. In different applications, they present an appropriate construction means. There were limitations in the definition of fuzzy graphs (FGs), which prompted us to propose a new definition for IVFGs. Some interesting properties related to the new IVFGs are investigated, and enough conditions under which the level graph on IVFGs is equivalent are obtained. Therefore, in this study, we present the properties of a level graph (LG) of an IVFG, and four operations, the Cartesian product (CP), composition (CO), union, and join, are investigated on it. Today, in a treatment system, one of the issues that can be very valuable and important to the quality of service to patients is finding qualified and efficient people in each department, which is not an easy task. But the interval-valued fuzzy graph, as an important fuzzy graph, can help us by considering the ability of each person in the form of intervals of numbers and the effectiveness of each one on the other (according to the relationships between them) in order to find the most worthy people. So, an application of IVFG to find the most effective person in a hospital information system has been introduced....
The construction waste recycling (CWR) industry in China is still in the primary stage. Thus, exploring the driving mechanisms of its development has significant theoretical worth and practical significance. Existing studies mainly focused on identifying individual key factors, while paying limited attention to the synergistic effects of multiple factors. The aim of this study is to systematically identify the primary drivers of China’s CWR industry from a macro perspective and explore their conjunctional effect on the development of the CWR industry in China. Firstly, based on the PEST model, the key factors driving the development of the CWR industry were identified from political, economic, social, and technological aspects. Secondly, the fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) approach was used to explore the causal relationship between the conjunction of these factors and the development level of the CWR industry. This study yields two interesting conclusions. The first is that none of the political, economic, social, and technological factors is a necessary condition. It means that the absence of any single factor will not restrict the development of the CWR industry. The second reveals two causal paths for the high-level development of the CWR industry, namely, the configuration of policy and social factors and the individual effect of economic factors. High-level development in the CWR industry can drive the sustainable development of the construction sector....
New mathematical theories are being increasingly valued due to their versatility in the application of intelligent systems that allow decision-making and diagnosis in different real-world situations. This is especially relevant in the field of health sciences, where these theories have great potential to design effective solutions that improve people’s quality of life. In recent years, several prediction studies have been performed as indicators of vocal dysfunction. However, the rapid increase in new prediction studies as a result of advancing medical technology has dictated the need to develop reliable methods for the extraction of clinically meaningful knowledge, where complex and nonlinear interactions between these markers naturally exist. There is a growing need to focus the analysis not only on knowledge extraction but also on data transformation and treatment to enhance the quality of healthcare delivery. Mathematical tools such as fuzzy set theory and soft set theory have been successfully applied for data analysis in many real-life problems where there is presence of vagueness and uncertainty in the data. These theories contribute to improving data interpretability and dealing with the inherent uncertainty of real-world data, facilitating the decision-making process based on the available information. In this paper, we use soft set theory and fuzzy set theory to develop a prediction system based on knowledge from phonoaudiology. We use information such as patient age, fundamental frequency, and perturbation index to estimate the risk of voice loss in patients. Our goal is to help the speech-language pathologist in determining whether or not the patient requires intervention in the presence of a voice at risk or an altered voice result, taking into account that excessive and inappropriate voice behavior can result in organic manifestations....
The present paper investigated the aggregation of individual preferences into a group fuzzy preference relation for a fuzzy set of decision-makers (DMs). This aggregation is based on the Kemeny optimization scheme. It was proven that this group relation is a Type-2 fuzzy relation (T2FR). The decomposition approach was used to analyze the group T2FR. It is shown that the group T2FR can be decomposed according to secondary membership grades into a finite collection of Type-1 fuzzy relations. Each of them is a group fuzzy relation for a crisp set of DMs, which is the corresponding α-cut of the original fuzzy set of DMs. Illustrative examples are given....
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