Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems : 12th International Conference, KES 2008, Zagreb, Croatia, September 3-5, 2008, Proceedings, Part I

Delegates and friends, we are very pleased to extend to you a warm welcome to this, the 12th International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems organised by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing at the University of Zagreb, in association with KES International. For over a decade, KES International has provided an annual wide-spectrum intelligent systems conference for the applied arti?cial intelligence researchc- munity. Having originated in Australia and been held there during 1997-99,the conference visited the UK in 2000,Japan in 2001, Italy in 2002,the UK in 2003, New Zealand in 2004, Australia in 2005, the UK in 2006, Italy in 2007, and now in Zagreb, Croatia in 2008. It is planned that KES 2009 will be held in Santiago, Chile before returning to the UK in 2010. The KES conference is - ture and regularlyattracts severalhundred delegates. As it encompassesa broad range of intelligent systems topics, it provides delegates with an opportunity to mix with researchers from other groups and learn from them. The conference is linked to the InternationalJournalof Intelligent and Knowledge-BasedSystems, published by IOS Press under KES editorship. Extended and enhanced versions of the best papers presented at the KES conference may be published in the Journal. In addition to the annual wide-range intelligent systems conference,KES has run successful symposia in several speci?c areas of the discipline. Agents and Multi-Agent Systems is a popular area of research.